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Making sure: Final master best practices


jkoseattle

Question

I want to master my album now. It consists of 12 projects, about 30 tracks per project. 35 minutes total. Each project has been mixed independently to my liking. Most of the instruments are the same from project to project, but not all. This is an orchestral suite, not a collection of songs, and movements bleed into each other with the use of sound effects. Therefore, it is important the sonic profile matches across all movements, because it should mimic an orchestra playing the whole thing through. 

Here is my plan. Will this cause me problems or is this the right way to go? 

1. Export Tracks through Entire Mix, as stereo wavs, being careful with my naming tags. I estimate the entire collection of all tracks across all movements to be around 10 Gb.

2. Create a new master audio-only CW project with tracks for each instrument I use. Will probably be about 40-50 tracks

3. Import each wav file into the master project, so that, for example, all the Oboe tracks across the length of the piece will occupy the Oboe track in my master project.

4. Line movements up properly and finesse the transitions between movements as needed. I will now have a single CW project consisting of 40-50 stereo audio tracks spanning 35 minutes. Because I exported Tracks Through Entire Mix, this master project will not have any effects whatsoever. At least not yet. 

5. Go through the whole thing painstakingly ensuring consistency from movement to movement. I already know each individual movement is the way I want it, but I don't know if they sound consistent. I suspect there will be a few inconsistencies, but not a lot. When I find them, I will either go back to the source project and fix something, or I will cover for it using envelopes and effects as necessary in the master project.

Is a 35-minute, 50 stereo audio track project going to give me processor or RAM problems? To repeat, effects in this master project should hopefully be pretty minimal, though I may make a lot of use of volume envelopes. Because most of every wav file is silence, just to keep myself sane, after importing I might remove the long silent parts of idle instruments to better visualize where things are happening.

Advice most welcome!!

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One more thing: I do have an external SSD drive available, but currently all my wavs are stored on the local internal HD. Would I gain anything by storing my 10 Gb on the SSD while working on this master project, or does that not make any difference?

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