Freezing Aux Track causing a crash

[Conor Cronin]

Hi folks!

I'm brand new here, and new to recording/producing - looking forward to getting involved, looks like a great community.

My problem is this - I've recently started running into CPU problems with a project I'm working on as it gets bigger. I've read that freezing tracks can help with this - in particular freezing the track on which you have CPU heavy plugins.

I'm using the free TH3 amp sim on my guitars. So I'm routing all the DIs to an aux track with the plugin in the FX rack. When I try to freeze this track Cakewalk will just instantly crash - no warning or anything. So I'm left with the situation where I don't seem to be able to freeze the tracks which I suspect are using the most CPU. 

Has anyone else encountered this or am I doing something incorrectly? Any feedback is really appreciated! Thanks,

Conor

[Conor Cronin]

On 8/14/2020 at 12:32 PM, Jonathan Sasor said:

If you're crashing, please send us a dump file and we can investigate:

 

Hi Jonathan,

Thanks  for your reply. Unfortunately these crashes don't seem to be creating dump files, I've checked the Minidumps folder and there isn't a corresponding file for the crashes. I've discovered that the problem happens when I try to freeze ANY aux track, regardless of the plugins attached. It doesn't happen for normal tracks, which freeze just fine. I feel like there should be an obvious reason for this, or something I'm just not understanding?

Thanks for your help.

[Light Grenade]

I use buses for submixing, but I tried using AUX tracks to do exactly what you're trying to do. I got the same error. 

I can't remember exactly, but I'm sure I got it to work by internally recording audio into the AUX track and then freezing.  I assumed the freeze aux error was happening as I was trying to freeze a track that had no audio inside of it.

If you don't know already, you can arm the aux track for recording and hit record to capture the audio inside the aux track. 

I'm too used to bussing, so quickly forgot about it, but let me know if this helps. 

Edited August 17, 2020 by Light Grenade
clarification

[Jonathan Sasor]

2 hours ago, Conor Cronin said:

Hi Jonathan,

Thanks  for your reply. Unfortunately these crashes don't seem to be creating dump files, I've checked the Minidumps folder and there isn't a corresponding file for the crashes. I've discovered that the problem happens when I try to freeze ANY aux track, regardless of the plugins attached. It doesn't happen for normal tracks, which freeze just fine. I feel like there should be an obvious reason for this, or something I'm just not understanding?

Thanks for your help.

Is the .exe still visible in Task Manager when it crashes? You can generate a dump file from there if so.

[John]

Cakewalk has had aux buses from way back and in all the years I have used Sonar and now Cakewalk I have never ever tried to freeze an aux bus. Never. One big reason is that its really an empty bus. Really, audio passes through it but a freeze would try to create an audio file incorporating all the tracks going through it.  To me that seems troublesome.  

I just don't think its a good idea to do that. 

For your setup using an amp sim, I would use a simple bus and not an aux bus. I would have the GTs out to the new GT bus. You can adjust the amount of the amp sim as an insert plugin. 

Another way may be to route a send to an aux bus and the tracks out to a GT bus and freeze the GT bus. Or export it as a single stem that you can bring back in to the project.

[Jonathan Sasor]

35 minutes ago, John said:

Cakewalk has had aux buses from way back and in all the years I have used Sonar and now Cakewalk I have never ever tried to freeze an aux bus. Never. One big reason is that its really an empty bus. Really, audio passes through it but a freeze would try to create an audio file incorporating all the tracks going through it.  To me that seems troublesome.  

I just don't think its a good idea to do that. 

Also a valid point. I can't reproduce a crash on my end, but based on how Aux tracks are designed, trying to freeze them is a somewhat odd workflow. The whole point of an aux track is to have a live input like a bus, but in the track pane. This allows recording, or you could also do a Bounce to Tracks to get a similar effect. If your CPU is starting to get eaten up, you could put TH3 on the individual tracks then freeze those separately, or you could record the aux track, then disable the input and the FX on it. You'll need to consider how the signal flow is to ultimately get what you need. 

The app shouldn't crash in any case, so if there's any kind of dump or reproducible scenario that we can look into, we're definitely interested in looking into that. It might be useful if you uploaded a copy of the project to that end if you can't get a dump file.

[Ludwig Bouwer]

I have never tried to freeze an Aux, but on quite a few occasions I have real-time recorded  what happens on that track and then drag that audio to a new track, archiving the entire Aux and it's source tracks.  I do this mainly to alleviate CPU on huge mixes with lots of side-chain etc, but also, sometimes a synth or some FX just won't  render properly in a bounce , so recording  a submix is my workaround.
One does what one needs to do to get the job done  
PS, I keep asking, but can we please have a waveform preview on Auxes?  Please?

Edited August 18, 2020 by Ludwig Bouwer

[Conor Cronin]

Thanks for all of the good feedback and suggestions lads. I think I was misunderstanding the point of aux tracks - I thought I was being clever using them as essentially a bus I could freeze.  The suggestions of recording to the aux track, or indeed leaving the plugin on the parent track and freezing that, will work for me.

[Mark pianist]

OK, I am here late to this. 

I have been using Aux tracks like busses also because I came from Protools, I got sick of the mess that Protools has given me. It works fine if you use approved hardware but otherwise it isn't good.

Workflow on cakewalk is awesome. Maybe the new Protools version has all this but I  don't care I am done with it.

Anyways, ok I understand your reason for not using Auxes just use the busses. However, how about if you have a Reverb or something on an aux and it is CPU intensive? 

I would want to freeze that and that's exactly what I did in Protools.

 

 

[Jonathan Sasor]

1 hour ago, Conor Cronin said:

Hi folks!

I'm brand new here, and new to recording/producing - looking forward to getting involved, looks like a great community.

My problem is this - I've recently started running into CPU problems with a project I'm working on as it gets bigger. I've read that freezing tracks can help with this - in particular freezing the track on which you have CPU heavy plugins.

I'm using the free TH3 amp sim on my guitars. So I'm routing all the DIs to an aux track with the plugin in the FX rack. When I try to freeze this track Cakewalk will just instantly crash - no warning or anything. So I'm left with the situation where I don't seem to be able to freeze the tracks which I suspect are using the most CPU. 

Has anyone else encountered this or am I doing something incorrectly? Any feedback is really appreciated! Thanks,

Conor

If you're crashing, please send us a dump file and we can investigate: