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How long does it typically take to export a finished song to mp3?


user390096

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Hi,

I'm curious as to how long it takes folks to export/encode a final song. My typical song is about 4 minutes long, and it takes at least 2  to 4 minutes to export it and I'm wondering if that's normal. I export typically 5-20 tracks thru 2-5 busses (vocals, music, reverb, delay, harmonizer) and make them mp3's at 44.1, bit depth 16, triangular dithering, using the lame encoder. Is that normal? I'm using an Apollo Quad MKii sound-card and just installed a new m.2 SSD hard drive with 16 GB RAM on a Thunderbolt 3 mother-board. I think I have a pretty fast machine but wish I could speed it up. Does anybody know of faster techniques?

export mp3.JPG

export mp3 options.JPG

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Depends on the exact plugins you're using, whether they are using upsampling.  Does increasing the bit rate on the Lame exported help? 

Are you exporting the files onto one of the M.2 SSDs.  With all those plugins , 2  to 4 minutes may actually be normal. 

As a test, maybe try without the plugins and see if it makes a measurable difference.

I am assuming you have a specific reason you're exporting to MP3 rather than wav.  MP3 export is more CPU intensive than wav

Other may offer more suggestions.

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Thanx Promidi,

Good to hear my export times are "normal". I've been exporting to mp3 from the early days as the mp3 files are 10 times smaller than wave files and I never really noticed ANY discernible difference in quality between wave and mp3 files. Of course, I supposedly can't hear much above 10 kz anymore, if I ever could, according to results from an on-line hearing test I recently did where you download wav files and give them a listen.?

 

I tried the wav export and it was only about 5% faster. My Cakewalk program file is on the boot m.2 "C" drive but the audio files are on a slower old-school magnetic disk. I wonder if moving them to the m.2 would speed it up considerably. I'll have to try that.

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Your question didn't mention the CPU that you have, but that's an essential part of question of runtime for MP3 encoding. The MP3 encoding is an especially CPU-bound task, while the mixdown work invokes the speed of the storage drives, varies with the quantity of tracks, quantity and intensity demands of the individual plug-ins, etc.  The type of audio interface and its connection to the PC are not a factor in this aspect of exporting.

Another part of the question is the 'Quality' slider and the target bitrate. You should do a couple of experiments that separate the processes:  First 'Bounce to Tracks' the entire mix to a stereo track, and then 'Export' that single stereo track as an MP3 with various settings for target bitrate, and the 'Quality' slider position.   That separation of mixdown processes and MP3 settings will give you a sense of where the time is burned. 

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1 hour ago, Terry Kelley said:

a minute or so for a 4 minute song is about what I see

I would agree that's more typical. 3-4 minutes suggests some plugin is holding up the show with slow offline processing.  You might want to try feezing individual tracks or bouncing buses, to determine where the bottleneck is.

You might also try setting a non-zero BounceBufSizeMsec= value in  AUD.INI (Preferences > Audio > Config File). By default (BounceBufSizeMsec=0), Cakewalk uses the real-time ASIO buffer size to process audio offline. Setting a higher value in AUD.INI can improve rendering performance.  I have mine set to 20. Values up to 200 are reasonable.

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I don't need it fast, I need it to work consistently. The various suggested tweaks to various values didn't work. It fails maybe a 1/4 of the time so it's only an annoyance. 

I do use a ton of plug-ins so I am not surprised it takes a bit to render and export. I do have the BounceBuffer set to 30. I'll try raising it and see what happens. Thanks!

Edited by Terry Kelley
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The mp3 portion of an export is not very taxing, so looking at plugins as recommended above would give you better insight.

If a project taxes a machine during mixing, you will often not get impressive rendering times. All of the processing the plugins are doing still needs to occur.

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23 hours ago, Terry Kelley said:

It fails maybe a 1/4 of the time so it's only an annoyance. 

If 'fails' means export completes without errors but the audio is flatlined, that's most likely to be a selection issue. Try exporting with no tracks selected, Source Category = Buses and only the Master bus selected in the export dialog.

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Tried that too. :) It will scream through the export in seconds creating short empty waves or with a few spikes. I can select all, select none, select some, doesn't matter. Sometimes I can just do it again and it will work but more often than not I have to close CW and do it again. That always works.  Others have mentioned the same issue.

On the other hand, I had to export several specific waves from a file and it never missed a beat.

Edited by Terry Kelley
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16 hours ago, Terry Kelley said:

It will scream through the export in seconds creating short empty waves or with a few spikes.

That seems most likely to be an issue with a specific plugin or feature of the project or a combination of the two - like a specific plugin and dense tempo changes.  I Googled the forum, and the only hit I got was your thread from Novemberwith and one guy responding that he had encountered it. You should PM him, and anyone else who's reported the same, and compare projects/plugins. Next time it happens try bypassing some or all FX, starting with any that aren't terribly common.

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Was going to add earlier that I batch processed CD tracks (already on the machine) into mp3s years ago with Audition, and each song took 1-2s max (and one song per thread). For your situation, the FX processing / reassembly of the audio is what you are seeing. The "mp3" part is rather trivial.

Edited by mettelus
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