Way to convert a bunch of Instrument tracks to Audio tracks?

[minminmusic]

Have a bunch of songs I've been saving as versions. V1 had raw, live drum tracks tracked against my demos. V2 was me tightening the arrangements. It was a mixture of Audio and Instrumental tracks.

I've now cleaned that all up, froze all the tracks to lock edits and fx (outside of the master buss fx.) Deleted tracks I no longer need in the current version. This has now been saved as V3.

My question is...is there a way to convert the instrumental tracks to audio tracks but maintain fader/pan settings, buss routing, eq etc? I'd like to break the connections with the soft synths (they are always available in my previous versions) to free up memory and further clean up/lighten the cpu load.

 

[Xoo]

Look up Freeze.

[Starship Krupa]

2 hours ago, minminmusic said:

froze all the tracks to lock edits and fx (outside of the master buss fx.) Deleted tracks I no longer need in the current version. This has now been saved as V3.

My question is...is there a way to convert the instrumental tracks to audio tracks but maintain fader/pan settings, buss routing, eq etc? I'd like to break the connections with the soft synths (they are always available in my previous versions) to free up memory and further clean up/lighten the cpu load.

So when you say "froze," you mean you did that to your audio tracks?

Instrument tracks can be frozen, too. When an instrument track is frozen "Cakewalk bounces the synth’s audio data to the synth track. Cakewalk disables the synth’s output, and disables the FX Rack on the synth track." (p. 1007, Cakewalk Reference Guide).

This won't have exactly the same effect on RAM usage, as the effects are merely bypassed and the synths merely silenced, but you'll probably find (as I have) that having everything just sitting there doing nothing will use fewer resources. It will be as if the frozen track is "paused," and I don't know about you, but my Performance monitor settles down when a project is paused.

Anyone recording audio and freezing synths should know about adding exclusions to Windows Defender's realtime malware scanning. It's in Windows Settings in Virus and Threat Protection. Add your Cakewalk Projects folder to Exclusions. There are others that are both safe and desirable to exclude, but I'll leave that up to you to decide.

[Xoo]

37 minutes ago, Starship Krupa said:

This won't have exactly the same effect on RAM usage, as the effects are merely bypassed and the synths merely silenced, but you'll probably find (as I have) that having everything just sitting there doing nothing will use fewer resources. It will be as if the frozen track is "paused," and I don't know about you, but my Performance monitor settles down when a project is paused.

Pretty certain there's an option to unload form memory too:

In Synth Rack drop-down menu.

[minminmusic]

Not sure any of the above is achieving what I'm after. So pic below...Track 51 is a frozen instance of Serum. Track 51 is a Instrument track. How do I convert that to a Audio track, not lose what's already been frozen, keep fade/pan/send info...but disconnect and remove the soft synth associated with it on the right?

Looks like it might be a three step process for every soft synth? 1) Split Instrumental Track. 2) Delete associated midi track. 3) Delete associated Soft Synth.
Sound right? Is there an easier way I'm overlooking? Thanks!

[John Vere]

It’s easy to use export stem’s. 

Edited June 5 by John Vere

[Xoo]

1 - Open Synth Rack

2 - Find the synth you want to freeze

3 - Right click on the snowflake widget and choose Freeze Options

4 - Untick Track FX and click OK

5 - Freeze the synth

This is all in the manual/help though.

[minminmusic]

Xoo...thanks, I understand all that. My question was...can you take an Instrument track that is frozen and turn it into an Audio track, severing the connection to the MIDI data and the Soft Synth, but retaining all of it's Track information (Fade/Pan/Send).

There's a possibility I'm eventually going down the road that John Vere suggests, so he's really prescient in his observations/suggestions. For now, I'm still editing vocals and my question is a little more housekeeping oriented. I know the previous version I've saved contained the MIDI/Soft Synths if I ever need to go back to them.

It's just finding out the best options for converting a mixture of Audio and Instrument tracks to ALL Audio tracks all the while maintaining current fader/pan/send info.

[John Vere]

never mind. 

Edited June 5 by John Vere

[Starship Krupa]

9 hours ago, minminmusic said:

Track 51 is a Instrument track. How do I convert that to a Audio track, not lose what's already been frozen, keep fade/pan/send info...but disconnect and remove the soft synth associated with it on the right?

Have you tried it in a test project?

I just did and here's how it worked:

I started with a Simple Instrument Track, panned it 70% left, added HY-Filter4 Free (all to make sure I could hear the results).

From the Synth Rack, I made sure that "Unload Synths on Disconnect" was selected, then I froze the synth.

Then I deleted the synth in the Synth Rack.

This left me with a track with the bounced audio from the freeze, with the original FX bypassed and the FX and panning baked in. Also the MIDI track, and no synth in the rack (and of course none associated with the MIDI track).

Fur schitzengiggles I unfroze the track and it deleted the audio clip. The bounced raw audio from the clip was intact in the project's audio folder.

It took longer to type than to execute.

From what I can parse in your posts, this sounds like it meets all of your criteria.

[minminmusic]

8 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

From what I can parse in your posts, this sounds like it meets all of your criteria.

This is what I did on a test file and it worked for what I was looking for. 1) Split Instrumental Track. 2) Delete associated midi track. 3) Delete associated Soft Synth.

Thanks for the help everyone.

[Starship Krupa]

1 hour ago, minminmusic said:

This is what I did on a test file and it worked for what I was looking for. 1) Split Instrumental Track. 2) Delete associated midi track. 3) Delete associated Soft Synth.

Thanks for the help everyone.

The way I did it, after freezing and deleting the synth, the track automatically turned into split MIDI/Audio. So maybe you can skip that first step.