Better way to do this than a mixdown?
Hi,
If you have two or more WAV files on a given track, and you want them all to be meged into one big WAV file starting from time 0:00 of the SONG (so you can ship it to someone without worrying about time signatures), is there an easier way to do this than mixing down JUST THAT TRACK to a new WAV file? This would be helpful for supporting sites like artistcollaboration.com since you can send the pertinent tracks as one complete WAV file. Mixing down can take some time especially if you have multiple tracks like this. Since you are just adding 0 energy to the track where there are gaps I wonder if this could be done a faster way programmatically in n-track? Not a biggee, just wondering…
Paul
Nope. Mixdown is the quickest way.
It would be nice to have a “consolidate track” button, but frankly, it would probably take just as much time as an offline mixdown. The difference would be that we wouldn’t have to remember to set the fader to zero, turn off the FX, uncheck “process master”, etc., and the consolidated track could be automatically named according to the track’s name in Properties.
So, it would be a convenience. But mixdown doesn’t really take much time with one track.
BTW, if you’re going to ship a track to someone, you still need to worry about synchronization, so you should always mix or cut-paste the count-in click from the original bed track into your part (or the first few notes, or whatever) so that the tracks can be aligned properly at the other end.
There are two reasons:
1) Sometimes DAWs will save some wave data “before the beginning” of the track, and use the wave file offset to compensate. While I don’t think this ever happens on mixdown, all the tracks at the other end could be offset this way so it won’t line up.
2) If you’re using MP3 to exchange files, MP3 adds roughly 25 msec of silence to the beginning of the song, throwing they synchronization off. (Thus, many of us use WMA instead, but that’s still not sufficient.)
Even if there are no problems, it’s nice having those count-in clicks to make it clear that there isn’t a problem – so if anything sounds off, it’s not a technical problem but a musical one.
Great answer as usual. Thanks!
Consolidate regions. A wonderful option in PT. Wish Ntrack had it.