Freezing Addictive Drums Sythns

[Sailor55]

1 hour ago, Chaps said:

1 hour ago, Colin Nicholls said:

Today I learned. Thanks!

You're very welcome. I made a short video and published it to YouTube to hopefully clear up any misunderstandings my clumsy explanation may have caused.

Hey! Thanks for the video. I never knew you could link the kick and snare to the flexi channels. Nice. 

[rsinger]

On 8/8/2025 at 7:47 PM, bmarlowe said:

Any idea as to what I may be doing wrong. - Thanks.

I just glanced through the responses - when you select the midi track and right click Freeze, is Freeze Synth highlighted?

[David Baay]

@bmarlowe If you're still having issues with freezing AD2, strip a copy of the project down to a single track and synth instance that won't freeze, and share it so we can investigate. If the problem goes away in the process of stripping it down, that might reveal the cause.

[bmarlowe]

My preference is to go the Mark Morgan-Shaw way and I agree with all of his reasons - that is close to what I initially did. I do have a lot of processing power, but would still like the option of freezing individual AD2 synths. Mark said:

"Simple freezing/bouncing – Each drum’s audio is frozen independently, so I can commit parts without printing the whole kit." Well, I still can't do that. I'll add that I don't have a single master midi track. I have individual midi tracks per drum instrument.

Anyway, I will go forward with David Baay's suggestion for creating a stripped-down project (thanks David). It will take me a while, but I am not sure of the best way to share. Dropbox? A *.cwb file?

 

Edited Sunday at 08:56 PM by bmarlowe

[bmarlowe]

OK - it went quicker than I thought. I have the stripped down project ready.

[David Baay]

30 minutes ago, bmarlowe said:

I am not sure of the best way to share. Dropbox? A *.cwb file?

Since it's just MIDI with a soft synth, the .CWP project file is enough and should be small enough to post here on the forum. Or you can PM me a copy.

[David Baay]

33 minutes ago, bmarlowe said:

"Simple freezing/bouncing – Each drum’s audio is frozen independently, so I can commit parts without printing the whole kit." Well, I still can't do that.

Freezing freezes the entire synth; it's not possible to freeze individual outputs. If you split the Instrument track you can 'bounce in place' by executing Bounce to Track(s), specifying the synth audio output track as the target for the bounce, and then mute the MIDI, but that gets awkward and doesn't really accomplish anything vs. just leaving the track playing "live". The synth is still live for the rest of the tracks so you're not conserving resources. I would just leave it all live until you're ready to freeze the whole thing.

[bmarlowe]

cwp attached. Keep in mind that this is a very simple drum track. I chose it from a very simple song I did way back on Cakewalk Pro Audio 9 because it was simple and I just wanted to experiment as a first time AD2 user.

There are 6 AD2 synths. There are also 2 SI-Drum synths for crash cymbals that I used to layer with the AD2 crash cymbal to get a particular sound. Note that freezing the SI synths works fine. If you delete tracks leaving only 1 AD2 synth, you still can't freeze it.

AD2-4_stripped.cwp

[bmarlowe]

13 minutes ago, David Baay said:

...If you split the Instrument track you can 'bounce in place' by executing Bounce to Track(s), specifying the synth audio output track as the target for the bounce... 

I think that answers my OP question. Working with the stripped-down cwp, if I split any of the individual tracks, I can then freeze that particular associated AD2 synth with no problem. Thanks much.

Edited Sunday at 09:57 PM by bmarlowe

[David Baay]

3 minutes ago, bmarlowe said:

Working with the stripped-down cwp, if I split any of the individual tracks, I can then freeze that particular associated AD2 synth with no problem.

Interesting, but should not be necessary. I'd still be interested in seeing the stripped project.

[bmarlowe]

the cwp is attached two posts up - can you see it?

[David Baay]

3 hours ago, bmarlowe said:

the cwp is attached two posts up - can you see it?

Oops, missed that. Yes, and it's immediately apparent that the issue is due to adding a drum map to the Instrument track. By definition, a Simple Instrument track consists of MIDI and Synth Audio tracks with I/O ports referencing the same synth. The drum map breaks that association and the freeze button in the MIDI track is grayed out as Sonar no longer sees the connection between the two. You can add a drum map to a simple instrument track using the Output widget on the MIDI tab of the Inspectr, but you can't re-make it once you split it except by Undo.

I'm thinking this might be easily resolved by having Simple Instrument tracks link the Freeze button to the audio side instead of the MIDI side.

Edited Monday at 01:18 AM by David Baay

[bmarlowe]

"..You can add a drum map to a simple instrument track using the Output widget on the MIDI tab of the Inspector..."

Understood and that does work for me. Thanks so much.

[bmarlowe]

One thing here though, if I do it via the split track method, I retain the AD2 map in the PRV.   If I do it by changing the output widget tab in the Inspector, I no longer see the AD2 map in the PRV.

[David Baay]

32 minutes ago, bmarlowe said:

One thing here though, if I do it via the split track method, I retain the AD2 map in the PRV.   If I do it by changing the output widget tab in the Inspector, I no longer see the AD2 map in the PRV.

Hmmm... that's not what I'm seeing. and as i said, you can't create an Instrument track from a MIDI track pointing to a drum map so I think you must have added the maps via the Inspector after creating the Instrument track... no?

In any case, as it stands now, if you want to use drum maps and have freezing work seamlessly, you pretty much need to keep the MIDI and Synth audio tracks separate. There are a various ways to use folders to help manage that.

[bmarlowe]

>> I think you must have added the maps via the Inspector after creating the Instrument track... no?

Yes.

Having separate midi and associated synth audio tracks is really not a problem for me.   

[David Baay]

I have to say I find the synth-instance-per-kit-piece setup to be really pointlessly complex and time-consuming to manage with pretty much no benefit except that they can be frozen independently which has pretty minimal utility itself.

But, if nothing else,  the one thing you really should do is create a single custom drum map that routes the relevant note numbers for each track to its respective synth instance, including the SI Drum instances. Aside from being able to see drum names in the PRV Drum Pane, this is one of the key purposes of using a drum map. With a separate map for each track, you can only see one track's notes in the Drum Pane at a time. If you use a single map, you can see and edit the hits for all the kit pieces together.

[msmcleod]

The best track arrangement I find for drum tracks is a single MIDI track routed to a single drum synth, and separate audio tracks for the outputs,  then all of those tracks routed to a single drum bus.

This way I can edit all of my drum notes in one place,  have separate FX on the outputs, and a single volume control (the drum bus) for overall volume.

 

[Bristol_Jonesey]

1 hour ago, msmcleod said:

The best track arrangement I find for drum tracks is a single MIDI track routed to a single drum synth, and separate audio tracks for the outputs,  then all of those tracks routed to a single drum bus.

This way I can edit all of my drum notes in one place,  have separate FX on the outputs, and a single volume control (the drum bus) for overall volume.

 

Exactly how I do it with BFD. 

[Starship Krupa]

2 hours ago, msmcleod said:

The best track arrangement I find for drum tracks is a single MIDI track routed to a single drum synth, and separate audio tracks for the outputs,  then all of those tracks routed to a single drum bus.

Assuming the drum instrument I'm using has individual outs, I've never thought of doing it another way.

Maybe this is because I recorded and mixed acoustic drum kits before I worked with virtual drum kits?

It wasn't until several years* into working with my DAW that it occurred to me that I could use a drum map to allow a single MIDI file to drive half a dozen different synths. I had been puzzled about the many one hit drum sounds in the soundpacks and other factory sounds for my A|A|S synths. I didn't understand how people were using them, were they sampling them into a phrase sampler? Making 6 different drum tracks, each with its own MIDI? Seemed much easier to just use a Kontakt-based drum machine, or some other one that supports individual outs.

Then it occurred to me that a drum map might allow me to put half a dozen instances of A|A|S Player in the project and call up the soundpack one hits in each of them. And it worked. Never thought about what might happen if I tried freezing them, though.

*(Sonar's drum map feature took me literally years to get my head around because the Cakelanders and I were speaking different languages. Before CbB, a "drum map" was something I applied to get the kit piece names to show up on the left edge of my Piano Roll. Therefore, using one centered around the piano roll. I was slightly aware that you could do other things with them, but that was the primary use. In Cakelandia, however, a "drum map" is a tool for routing MIDI notes to notes in your drum (or other) instruments. Therefore, it's in the category of MIDI track outputs. It also allows you to display the kit piece names on the left edge of the piano roll, but if you just want that, 95% of the user base either uses instrument definitions or just memorizes which piano key goes with which sound. Using a drum map just to display kit piece names? Yikes.)

Edited Monday at 02:23 PM by Starship Krupa