Controlling the order of bounced tracks...

[ROBERT KREMER JR]

I've got 7 midi tracks associated with 7 soft synths.  All these tracks have the correct corresponding names (midi track called "Lead Strings", and its associated soft synth track called "Lead Strings", etc.), and I've created 7 empty audio tracks waiting to receive the bounced audio.  When I select all of the midi and soft synth tracks, then go to Tracks>Bounce To Track(s),and choose the first empty audio track (under "Destination"), and choose Tracks (under "What To Bounce"), it correctly bounces the right sounds, but it's in a track order that doesn't agree with my midi and soft synths tracks' order (as seen in Track View).

I thought I had found the solution when I opened the synth rack and discovered that the bounced tracks were actually matching the order of the synths in the rack, not the way they're ordered in Track View.  I thought, "Ah, I'll just re-order the rack, and it'll bounce the tracks in the order I want!" (namely, the order I have them in Track View). ..

Well, first obstacle is, apparently you can't rearrange the order of the synths in the rack... easily.  I say "easily" because, although there's no direct option to move synths around in the rack, another Cakewalk forum member posted a workaround which involved deleting each synth, one by one, and then immediately hitting Ctrl-Z (Undo), which restores that synth to the last position in the rack.  By doing this operation for each synth, you can arrange the synths in the order you want in the rack.  (I found that it's also necessary to check the "delete associated track" box as well, each time)...

I did that trick, in the order that I wanted the synths to appear in the rack, and it indeed rearranged them in the order I wanted...

...But now when I bounce all the midi/synths to audio tracks, the resulting tracks are still in the order that the rack was in, originally, before I rearranged it.  The track order doesn't reflect the new synth rack order.

So... I'm stumped.  Does anyone know of a way to actually control the order of bounced synth tracks?

Thanks.

Edited November 5, 2023 by ROBERT KREMER JR
edited for clarity

[OutrageProductions]

Why not just 'Freeze' them in place?

It's the 'snowflake' icon on each synth in the synth rack.

Edited November 5, 2023 by OutrageProductions

[ROBERT KREMER JR]

Thanks for that.  Sorry, I should've elaborated a bit more.  It didn't occur to me that there would be different solutions for tracks vs. clips.  Freeze would work great for entire tracks, but, in these tracks, I've got short ranges, or clip "stacks".  I want to be able to bounce each stack's midi clips to an identical stack of audio clips (down in the awaiting audio tracks), and in the same order (order is shown in the screenshot below).  Cakewalk is currently ignoring this order when bouncing to tracks.  Meaning, while it might name the clips correctly (since I've already named the awaiting audio tracks), the actual sounds don't match the names. ("PRE-M STRINGS - 01" will instead play drums, etc.)...

Basically, I want the result to look exactly like the stacks shown below, except they'll be audio stacks instead of midi, and with the correct sounds on each:

The clips need to remain short and distinct, because I'm going to be exporting them, to become short audio files in a Windows folder.  So, freezing the tracks (which would combine each track's clips into one long audio clip) isn't an option.

 

Edited November 5, 2023 by ROBERT KREMER JR
edited for clarity

[OutrageProductions]

Are you starting with Simple Instrument Tracks (that contain the MIDI notes), or MIDI tracks driving individual VST instruments?

I just ran 3 SIT tracks (bass, drums, piano) with MIDI (2 bars), WITHOUT setting up the receiving Audio Tracks first, selected all three clips, used <Tracks><Bounce to Tracks> which opens the Export dialog, set the source to <Tracks> and (starting at track #4) they all printed in order and correctly named in one operation.

Then I left the receiving audio tracks in place (deleted the printed clips) and did the exact same <Bounce to Tracks> steering the first MIDI track to the first receiving track, and it also succeeded as expected. This has to be done for EACH "Stack" of clips separately but identically, otherwise it will print an audio track that is the entire length of the sequentially placed MIDI clips.

Your issue may be from using PRE-named audio tracks and not steering them correctly inside the Export dialog.

If you are using separate MIDI & VST instruments, same thing works IF you select both mated pairs (MIDI & associated instrument track), but again only in "Stacks", as it were.

HOWEVER: if you are expecting the printed Audio clips to have the same names as the Source clips, you're outta luck. The resulting audio clips are just named for the source track (bounced).

Selecting only the Second set of  "Stacked" clips and using <Bounce to Tracks> (steering them again to the first receiving track)...

results in this:

Edited November 6, 2023 by OutrageProductions

[David Baay]

4 hours ago, ROBERT KREMER JR said:

another Cakewalk forum member posted a workaround which involved deleting each synth, one by one, and then immediately hitting Ctrl-Z (Undo), which restores that synth to the last position in the rack.  By doing this operation for each synth, you can arrange the synths in the order you want in the rack.

The tagline from the old (maybe before your time) margarine commercial comes to mind: "It's not nice to fool Mother Nature". I can repro that CbB remembers the original order of the virtual ports in the rack and continues to render in that order. Apparently the render order is stored separately, and not re-ordered by the sneaky rack re-ordering trick. I'm still not clear what the ultimate goal is but it might be time to just tell the little OCD man in your head to go away and find something more important to worry about. I have to do this pretty regularly myself.

Edited November 6, 2023 by David Baay

[ROBERT KREMER JR]

Thanks, David Baay, for that insight regarding the rendered track order.   And no, that margarine commercial was not before my time.  If CbB really is angry that such a sneaky thing was attempted, I'll just say the author of the workaround forced me to do it. 😁 Oh, and I did try to tell the little OCD man to buzz off, but his response was simply to say, curtly, "That's Mister OCD man to you, buddy".  So, it looks like I'll be pursuing this audio-clip-ordering solution for at least a bit longer.

And OutrageProductions, thanks so much for taking the time to do that little experiment and post the screenshots.  Can't wait to get to my music desk in a few days, to compare what I'm doing/seeing to what you're doing/showing.  I'll post back.

[David Baay]

2 hours ago, ROBERT KREMER JR said:

compare what I'm doing/seeing to what you're doing/showing

I think he might have missed that the order of synths in the rack did not match your tracks initially while his did. I'm guessing you either re-ordered tracks  or did a synth replacement earlier on in the project that caused the discrepancy.