Freezing Addictive Drums Sythns

[bmarlowe]

I am using Addictive Drums 2 (latest just updated today) for the first time on my current project. All has gone well. I am using a separate synth per drum simple instrument track. At this point I wanted to freeze the associated synths. For some reason I can't freeze them. Nothing bad happens, they just will not freeze. I have other synths running that freeze with no problem. Any idea as to what I may be doing wrong. - Thanks.

 

[Colin Nicholls]

I don't know why they are not freezing but that sounds like a sub-optimal way to achieve your end-goal. You really have a separate instance of AD2 per drum ?

Any reason why you are not using a single virtual instrument track for AD2, driving it by multiple MIDI tracks? Just one instance of AD2?

[bmarlowe]

Good question.

Previously I did it that way (track per drum instrument) with SI drums (and even before that with TTS-1 drums).  I saw a tutorial by Creative Sauce that set up AD2 that way in Cakewalk (he also showed the way you propose).  I like the complete flexibility it gives me to add any plugin I have to any drum instrument. I do appreciate that AD2 has its own built in mixer (as well as all kinds of processing that can be applied to individual drum instruments).

I actually added specific reverb plugins (running 100% wet) for the hi-hat and snare, with the reverb panned to specific places using the respective pan-pot in the Sonar console. Could I have done similar from within AD2, I guess probably. That said, freezing AD2 synths should work I think.

Edited yesterday at 04:09 AM by bmarlowe

[Amberwolf]

How many outputs does AD2 have?  If it is like SessionDrummer (3?) and has 8, that covers many drumkits' (well, depending on your music type) with one stereo out per drum, allowing you to setup a set of tracks with one track per output pair and separate fx bins for each one.  I also sometimes setup 2(+) separate tracks with completely different fx chains for teh same drum or set of perc sounds, to mix/fade/switch between them for different parts of a song (there are easier ways, but this works).   That's how I set mine up when I use MIDI-driven drums.    (I often also use sliced up wave files of individual drum hits or pieces of "loops", in addition to or instead of that; these are setup in tracks the same way). 

 

If it's like SI drums and only has one output pair, then there's not much option besides multiple instances if you need to hear all the drums with their own FX live as you compose the drum tracks. 

 

 

Regarding freezing plugin issues--is it that it won't freeze at all, or that it doesn't work right when you do freeze it?  Soemtimes setting your freeze options to realitme instead of fast bounce fixes the latter. 

In my ancient SONAR (probably wouldnt' happen in modern ones?), very occasionally I have run into a problem where Sessiondrummer will go thru all the motions of freezing, and actually show waveforms on every track, right up till the last one  completes, and then they all go blank and there's no sound. When I look I find none of the wave files it just created still exist.  My workaround is to cancel *just* before the end but keep all the partially rendered audio.  I dont remember if I have done this with SD or not, but for problematic bounce-to-tracks for audio clips, I'll select just those tracks, and export those without any fx (and cancel just before the end and keep all the partially rendered audio if it fails too) and then just drag all those audio files into the tracks.   

Edited yesterday at 04:33 AM by Amberwolf

[bmarlowe]

As I said, Nothing bad happens, they just will not freeze. Press the snowflake, nothing happens.

[Max Arwood]

5 hours ago, bmarlowe said:

As I said, Nothing bad happens, they just will not freeze. Press the snowflake, nothing happens.

It could be a routing problem check your ins and outs for each channel.

[Bristol_Jonesey]

8 hours ago, bmarlowe said:

I am using Addictive Drums 2 (latest just updated today) for the first time on my current project. All has gone well. I am using a separate synth per drum simple instrument track. At this point I wanted to freeze the associated synths. For some reason I can't freeze them. Nothing bad happens, they just will not freeze. I have other synths running that freeze with no problem. Any idea as to what I may be doing wrong. - Thanks.

 

Why are you using a separate synth for each drum?

Addictive Drums 2 has a total of 14 audio mixer channels, consisting of 10 mono channels and 4 stereo channels. Specifically, it includes 10 mono channels for individual drum sounds (kick, snare, hi-hat, etc.), 2 stereo channels for overhead and room mics, 1 stereo bus channel, and 1 stereo master channel. 

Each and all of these channels can and should be routed to individual audio tracks in Sonar, all being fed by a single Midi track.

[Sailor55]

3 hours ago, Bristol_Jonesey said:

Each and all of these channels can and should be routed to individual audio tracks in Sonar, all being fed by a single Midi track.

I'm not sure why all of the AD2 channels "should" be routed to separate SONAR tracks. I've been using AD2 for years, fed by a single MIDI track through a drum map. Although I used to route AD2 channels individually to SONAR tracks, I decided long ago to give the AD2 mixer a chance. It has serious depth which I've found quite adequate for my purposes. Occasionally I will still route out the kick drum signal to duck a bass guitar or something else. But it always seemed redundant to me to have all those AD2 mixer channels each with a volume, pan, mute and endless effects duplicated in SONAR tracks with all their attendant controls and effects. Can you comment on what flexibility this approach may be costing me.

[Bristol_Jonesey]

Using the internal mixer in AD2 is the one case where this makes sense.

But you are still only using one instance of AD2 and you are able to process the audio channels independently of each other, just like routing them into Sonar tracks.

I could do exactly the same with BFD but I choose to use Sonar for all mixing duties - it just seems more logical to me.

[David Baay]

7 hours ago, Bristol_Jonesey said:

Each and all of these channels can and should be routed to individual audio tracks in Sonar, all being fed by a single Midi track.

I think he's using the Instrument Track per Output option that CbB added a few years ago. This gives the best of both worlds.

The only thing I can think of offhand that might prevent freezing in that case would be that one or more of the Instrument tracks is Archived.

Edited 20 hours ago by David Baay

[bmarlowe]

Thx to Max, Bristol_Jonesy, Sailor55, Amberwolf, David & Colin for the comments and helpful suggestions. I have another perhaps related AD2 issue.

As I said, all works fine except freezing. When I started this project, using CbB, I used the AD2 Standard drum map downloaded from Mike Enjo (Creative Sauce), AD2 Standard.map. For each Cakewalk AD2 drum track I created a new map using the Cakewalk Drum Map Manager: DM1-AD2 Standard, DM2-AD2 Standard..... 

These DM*- maps are associated with the project, so they are there after the switch to Sonar if I open that same project. Here is the issue I have. If I open up a new project in Sonar, create an AD2 synth, then go into the Drum Map Manager-->presets, the AD2 Standard map is not listed there. I figured that was because I had not copied AD2 Standard.map into C:\Program Data\Cakewalk\Sonar\Drum Maps. But even after I do that, I still do not see the preset for AD2 Standard. Keep in mind that in CbB, I do see it.

Edited 19 hours ago by bmarlowe

[Chaps]

29 minutes ago, bmarlowe said:

Here is the issue I have. If I open up a new project in Sonar, create an AD2 synth, then go into the Drum Map Manager-->presets, the AD2 Standard map is not listed there.

Check your Folder Locations in Sonar and that will show where the drum maps it accesses are. I have drum maps in three locations because SONAR X3 Producer, Cakewalk by BandLab, and Cakewalk Sonar all seem to have installed drum maps in different locations. Or I did it and forgot. One of those two. If you need it, here is a folder with different AD2 drums maps, project and track templates.

AD2 Files

[bmarlowe]

First, the answer to the above question is the drum map files for Sonar go here:

C:\Users\Owner\AppData\Roaming\Cakewalk\Sonar\Drum Maps\.

As for my initial question, as Jonesy said, I can get what I want with just one instance of AD2.
 

 

[Mark Morgon-Shaw]

On 8/9/2025 at 4:45 AM, Colin Nicholls said:

You really have a separate instance of AD2 per drum ?

Any reason why you are not using a single virtual instrument track for AD2, driving it by multiple MIDI tracks? Just one instance of AD2?

I’ve been working this way for years, and it’s not because I don’t know how to use multi-outs — it’s because it offers flexibility you simply can’t get when everything is tied to a single AD2 mixer.

Why I use one AD2 instance per drum element:

Total sound independence – I can load a kick from one kit, a snare from another, toms from a third, and cymbals from yet another without being locked into a single kit’s tonal character.

Easy layering – Two kicks? No problem. One clean, one heavily processed, perfectly phase-aligned, each with its own FX chain.

Separate routing for sidechains – Kick can hit the bass sidechain, snare can trigger reverb ducking, hats can sidechain a synth gate, etc.

Creative FX freedom – I can slam the snare with distortion, gate the toms, and run the hats through a delay — all without touching the other drums.

Simple freezing/bouncing – Each drum’s audio is frozen independently, so I can commit parts without printing the whole kit.

Yes, it uses more CPU/RAM, but on a modern system it’s barely noticeable. For me, the workflow gains outweigh the tiny performance hit.

Multi-outs make sense if you want to treat AD2 like a traditional kit, but for hybrid, layered, or heavily processed productions, multiple instances is the way to go.

Edited 2 hours ago by Mark Morgon-Shaw

[Chaps]

Another feature of AD2 I like is the ability to link the kick and snare with the Flexi instruments, so you can have up to four kicks or snares sounding in one kit (or other combinations), and assign an audio track for each one. the kick and snare can both trigger the Flexi instruments in different ways. Even with just one instance of AD2 you have a lot of flexibility.