How to freeze a bus or a mix of tracks?

[1000db]

Hi,

I'm new to Waveform 12 Free. I can't wrap my head around how to freeze a track that I feed several tracks into. It seems impossible to find decent documentation or tutorials about this.

If I'm using the "pack selected tracks into a submix track" method, it doesn't let me use the freeze on the output mix. Here's a screenshot example of a submix with OTT compression that I want to apply to two channels and then freeze it:

Screen Shot 2023-06-24 at 18.51.44.png

Another method I've tried is to create an empty rack and route the audio with that. What happens with this method is that I can freeze the "audio mix" channel but there is no audio after freezing it. It's like the freezed audio track is empty.

Screen Shot 2023-06-24 at 18.32.02.png

Could somebody please advice me how to achieve this? I would really like to be able to use some CPU heavy fx-plugins on the mix buses

TIA!

[mikoatkvr]

Create a 'folder' track and drag all the tracks into that 'folder' track and then you can freeze it.

Be careful with this tho as i just noticed that when using undo will delete the files from the project, but using unfreeze works fine.

[mikoatkvr]

Oh yeah I just noticed that only the subsequent tracks can be frozen when there is any plugin on the folder or submix track. I also tried adding a 'freeze point' plugin onto the top level track but it wont allow it to be added. This seems like a bug

[mikoatkvr]

Ok I have found a working method :-

(1) No need to use submix or folder tracks, just route the output of each track to another regular track
(2) Now on this track that everything is routed to add your OTT etc and directly to the right of that drag in a ' freeze point ' plugin

The track routing is the little box at the very right side of the tracks beside mute and solo.

[1000db]

Hi,

Thanks a lot for your reply and suggestions.

I found out that i had disabled "show outputs" from the waveform's settings. This gave me new options to play with but didn't really help at all as the same issue persists no matter which method I'm using to route the audio.

I have noticed this last method you mentioned works but only if you don't route that channel somewhere else.

At the moment what I am trying to achieve is to first route each channel from VSTi to their own channels (done). Some of them will flow directly to "Drum_Master_Mix", some of them to Drum_Bus_1 and some of them to Drum_Bus_2. Both Drum_Bus_1 and Drum_Bus_2 are feed to Drum_Master_Mix in order to add a master compression for the whole drum track. In this scenario it seems the only way to freeze anything is to freeze the Drum_Master_Mix

This is not so bad situation with the drum rack as there isn't that many individual effects on single drum tracks, but I also have to set up some sort of instrument rack with a similar structure with couple of buses that will be mixed together in the end and ran through sidechaining. It would be really useful to be able to freeze only individual instrument tracks that are inside the buses, or sometimes freeze a whole bus if there is some heavy processing on it. Yet I need that sidechaining for all these tracks in the end so they should be mixed together.

Super disappointed really. I was so happy I found Waveform that I had never heard before. I like the workflow way better than Ableton's as I can access all the plugins directly from the arrangement view. All and all it seemed like an awesome DAW. Everything is in place but this "functionality" has really crippled me down completely

Perhaps I have to bounce of each tracks clips separately to a new channel instead? This would be beneficial in some ways because then I could work with the arrangement with the rendered clips. I just hate the idea of the project tracks doubling up.

Or can I somehow use Aux Send/Returns as the last part of the rack for the sidechaining so that the freeze functionality would remain intact?

[dysjoint]

Yeah, Waveform can route all over the place, but when it comes to freezing or rendering it only seems to look at the very end of the chain, the last point before the signal heads to the audio output. So you get the same problem if you want to render a clip or merge clips or render a whole track.

If that track outputs to anywhere other than the default audio output, Waveform won't find any audio to render. I constantly have to switch the track to 'Default Audio Output', do my render and then switch it back to the bus or track I had it on.

(I use a similar setup to Watchful, I only have one or two or three tracks going to the default output, everything else is routed inside the track view)

But here's the thing I just tried (I never normally use freeze)

In settings go to the Freeze point creation and set it to manual. Now you have your blue freeze point utility just sitting on your track and you have to highlight it and click 'Freeze Track' down in the properties panel at the bottom of the screen, whenever you want to freeze.

Now I'm pretty sure you can use the same workaround as I use for rendering.

Switch the output of the track you want to freeze to 'Default Audio Output', hit 'Freeze Track', then switch the output back to your original bus or wherever. Absolute pain in the backside. But it should work.

[[ Edit: I'm not using submixes, I'm using the do it yourself method of routing to other tracks and creating buses that way. (Watchfuls' method) ]]