Freezing tracks changes tonal balance ?

[noynekker]

Was working on some drum tracks, and noticed when I froze the drum tracks, they sounded way crispier on playback after freezing . . . crispier especially noticeable in the hihat track, which needed to be turned way down because of way more high frequencies. But, overall the sound changed after freezing, monitoring at same levels on headphones. I was wondering if this is an illusion in the change of latency, since the playback has turned the instrument track off, and converted to audio, playing back more on the beat . . . or could it even be plugin up sampling kicking in ? (I have it at the default setting 2x - 88.2 kHz)

I would have thought freezing should not change the tonal balance, and should capture the sound of the VSTi without alteration ?

Anybody noticed this, or is there another setting that affects the tonal balance when freezing tracks ?

 

[Amberwolf]

So if you clone the frozen track to a new track, to preserve the audio and all track content/settings/etc, then unfreeze the originals, then flip the phase on or the other, they don't cancel? 

 

Is it possible that the freeze is including some effect(s) that are then not being disabled after the freeze, so the fx are then doubled?  (something on an aux, or a bus, or even the track itself?)

 

 

 

 

[noynekker]

@Amberwolf thanks for your reply, an interesting trick you've suggested . . . I tried cloning the unfrozen piano part (has no effects) . . .  and flipping the phase does result in total cancellation.  Different result when cloning the unfrozen drum tracks, which do have some FX bin, and ProChannel efx . . . there is some cancellation when you flip the phase switch, though, you can still hear some signal, but it is much quieter. (Turning off the EFX and ProChannel makes no difference)

Not sure what that means, is there some extra signal leaking through somewhere ? . . . I only have the one Master Bus, and it plugs directly into my MOTU M2 audio interface.

[Amberwolf]

Dpeending on the fx, complete cancellation won't happen--if the fx have any kind of randomness to them, for instance, or lfos / etc that are not perfectly in sync with the same pionts in the timeline every time.   

If the fx always processes everyhting exactly the same on every instant of the track, and any lfos / etc are in synch with the clock, then they'll cancel.

Almost all the fx I use auotmagically stay sync'd or have a toggleable control to enable/disable sync, but the Little Green Amp I usually use for simple distortion / amp sounds in the background doesn't, so nothing it processes ever cancels completely--there is always some high end left. 

 

If you turn off all hte fx everywhere (there's a global button up top somewhere), and *then* freeze, and then clone / phase flip / compare, does it cancel?  If so, it means that somehow there's an fx doing something during the freeze that's different than what happens after the freeze, etc.

 

If the difference left over after the cancellation is the "extra" sound you hear that you don't want, then finding the source of that sound will fix the problem--and it would probably be an fx somewhere.  (even one built into the synth rather than something in a track/bux/aux)