Freezing

[LoRez]

just gonna toss in my 2 cents. i use freeze in logic religiously and never have any problems. if i'm at the limits of my cpu usage and my machine won't allow me 2 seconds of playback before it says enough, then i really don't mind waiting the 3-5 minutes it might take to freeze 20 tracks of a 5-6 minute long song. it works well, and if i really wanted to, could import the freeze files back into logic as audio and just disable and hide all the original tracks. it's too bad that when everyone else jumped on the Emagic "freeze" bandwagon (correct me if i'm wrong, but i'm pretty sure Logic had freeze first), they didn't take time to implement it in a "logical" way (i'm through with the puns now). i believe DP4's freeze function does a realtime bounce, so if you freeze even one track, it takes the length of the song.

Sonar4's freeze will automatically render only the area where data is present. It also displays the frozen track as audio so you can manipulate it, groove clip it, etc. Also, the quick freeze/unfreeze allows you to A/B without waiting for freeze to render or "un-render". You can also freeze just effects or just a synth or both. To me this seems to be at least as good of an implementation as in Logic. So I guess the point is that not everyone who "jumped on the freeze bandwagon" did a half ass job if implementing it.

my point didn't extend to the fact that sonar 4 got released like, 2 days ago while freeze has been around for a while. i would really hope that they implemented it properly in S4 since they've had the chance to watch so many varying degrees of success and failure on other platforms.

True true

[meister eder]

Sonar4's freeze will automatically render only the area where data is present. It also displays the frozen track as audio so you can manipulate it, groove clip it, etc. Also, the quick freeze/unfreeze allows you to A/B without waiting for freeze to render or "un-render". You can also freeze just effects or just a synth or both. To me this seems to be at least as good of an implementation as in Logic.

I have to disagree here. While those are really great functions and options (which I wouldn't mind to have in Logic as well - no question!), the orginal idea of freezing - like the word says - should be to keep the audible result of the frozen track and the unfrozen track strictly the same. As soon as you can manipulate the file of the frozen track, this coherence isn't given anymore, hence diluting the idea of freezing.
IMO freezing and rendering should be kept two different tasks, despite the fact that they are technically about the same.

One question though: I see no problem freezing the synth and keeping the effects realtime, but are you sure you can also freeze just effects without freezing the synth? How would that work?

[neverwhere2012]

i'm just praying that logic 7 will have full PDC and allow freeze on auxes/busses.

[Jaeson Merrill]

as far as automation..

lets compare to samplitude, the best example of freeze, imo..

you freeze a bus, it finds all the tracks linked to it, and all the effects linked to those tracks, applies them, renders, and then disables them all in a click of a mouse button.

all individual automation is kept, and all effects are applied properly.

you can easily turn 90 percent cpu, into 6.

and it doesnt take THAT long.

now, if there were freezing options on fxracks, it would apply those fx to whatever generators it was linked to, and then freeze those generators as well...

sounds complicated, making my eyes cross..

but ... it would work, if there was a way that an internal controller could report which generators were linked to it knob - wise.

anyhow, even if this complex stuff doesnt cut it,

why not just freeze the generators as the controllers control them when youre happy with the automation, and then just unfreeze if you want to change it???

that is the workflow im used to anyway.

and its definetly NOT a waste of coding, and its
NOT useless. I have alot of songs to prove this

Gol, i appreciate that you dont want to pack FL with stupid "buzz" features, like you say, people hear a term like "PDC" or "Freeze" or any other buzz term, and whether its useful or not, they wANT It!! and they want it NOW, cause the other host has it. Im glad youre not accepting that crap, but at the same time, dont deny it solely on the basis that it IS a buzz term.. Its useful to many, which is why the majority of the ppl want it..

well, at least me anyway.

[BitFlipper]

Just a quick little note...

At least as far as Sonar (pre v4 at least) is concerned, just MUTING a track does not reduce CPU usage at all. It took me a while to figure out why this was the case, but now I know why. The assumption is that you can unmute the track at any second, at which point you would expect the track to sound correct. This means that the audio must have been playing into the effects (like say, delays, reverbs, etc). So in reality it's only the track's final output (post effects) that is muted, not the source and all the effects.

I just mention this because I noticed some people talked about simulating the freeze function by rendering to audio track and muting the original. Actually, all you need to do in that case is to ARCHIVE the original track instead of mute. That will give you back it's resources until you un-archive it again.

BitFlipper

[LoRez]

Sonar4's freeze will automatically render only the area where data is present. It also displays the frozen track as audio so you can manipulate it, groove clip it, etc. Also, the quick freeze/unfreeze allows you to A/B without waiting for freeze to render or "un-render". You can also freeze just effects or just a synth or both. To me this seems to be at least as good of an implementation as in Logic.

I have to disagree here. While those are really great functions and options (which I wouldn't mind to have in Logic as well - no question!), the orginal idea of freezing - like the word says - should be to keep the audible result of the frozen track and the unfrozen track strictly the same. As soon as you can manipulate the file of the frozen track, this coherence isn't given anymore, hence diluting the idea of freezing.
IMO freezing and rendering should be kept two different tasks, despite the fact that they are technically about the same.

I would contend that it does not dilute the idea of freeze but rather expands upon it. If you don't want to manipulate the frozen track then just leave it alone...or hide it even. It's just that this capability allows you much more freedom. You could freeze a synth, manipulate it, move it to a new track and then freeze a whole new copy of the synth you were using into the old place. It allows lots of freedom, but if one simply wants to use the freeze for saving resources and always wants a one/one relationship, then they can just keep their hands off it or, as I said, even hide it.

One question though: I see no problem freezing the synth and keeping the effects realtime, but are you sure you can also freeze just effects without freezing the synth? How would that work?

I probably wasn't clear. Apparently, you can freeze effects on an audio track. You can also freeze synths with or without effects. You could not, I imagine, freeze the effects of a synth without freezing the synth itself as this would be paradoxical

[Igor 4000]

Gol--

How about a simple macro that will render a mixer channel that has been armed to record, drop the resulting audio clip in the playlist, and then turn off all effects for that armed channel and any instruments associated to that mixer channel? Is that basically what you had in mind?

And please consider the idea of being able to delete an audio clip from harddisk via the audio clip's menu (that triange thingie). "Rendering by selection" is already akin to "freezing", and that would certainly make things easier.

[Lunch Money]

I think some people's logic has taken a hike.

-How can you freeze 'just' the effects? That doesn't make any sense. It's simply not possible... sure, when you freeze, the effects are frozen, which is the whole point of it... but you can't manipulate them at that point. Unless I'm missing someone's point here. Freezing the effects just means rendering the audio and offloading the effects, which is what we've been talking about all along.

Freezing a synth... is also rendering audio.

Whether it's a synth or an effect doesn't matter one little bit, it IS theoretically possible to be selective about WHICH effects are frozen, but if you had breaks in your chain (ie. freezing effects 1 and 3 as opposed to 1, 2, and 3) it would have to render multiple times, thereby doubling (or more) the render time.

In fact, the only way to even adjust pan and volume is to freeze individual tracks (creating multiple audio files instead of just one) rather than having a global freeze track. I'm pretty sure that's how FXfreeze does it-- by freezing just one track at a time and generating multiple audio files.

Really, a lot of this just takes a bit of thinking it through....

Manipulating frozen tracks is counter to the entire point of it, and will make a mess of your project directory... and the logistics of it are so complicated so as to make the possible CPU and HDD usage such that the point is defeated.

An idea I tossed around once that for some reason got shot down is to allow the possibility of tiered freezing/unfreezing. This WOULD occupy -space- on your hard drive, though. Without going into detail (I can find the thread somewhere), you can add effects to a track after freezing, and then when you're happy with the result, they'll all get dumped into the unfrozen track. There are so many possible ways to handle further freezing and unfreezing that it'd take a few pages to go into.

Greg

[Jaeson Merrill]

I think some people's logic has taken a hike.

-How can you freeze 'just' the effects? That doesn't make any sense. It's simply not possible... sure, when you freeze, the effects are frozen, which is the whole point of it... but you can't manipulate them at that point. Unless I'm missing someone's point here. Freezing the effects just means rendering the audio and offloading the effects, which is what we've been talking about all along.

obviously, you just didnt understand what i said, no problem tho, cause i can be rather confusing

im talking about the FL controllers, which are listen as FX.

and i didnt MEAN just the fx, as you read on, it links it to generators as well.

i think this issue is just overdone.

look at samplitude!!
it does it fine.

sure, samp isnt the same, but it works!

[neverwhere2012]

logic generates multiple audio files when it freezes. it stores them in the project folder in a subfolder named "Freeze Files". i don't quite understand the problem with that, since, if you render the track to free up cpu power, you're still rendering individual audio files. the idea of a global freeze file sounds kind of scary in a way, sounds as if there would be better chance of that method corrupting the audio. and at least with individual freeze files, i can use it as a batch bounce function should i want to load my session into a different host.

[meister eder]

I would contend that it does not dilute the idea of freeze but rather expands upon it.

The idea of a motorcycle also expands on the idea of a bicycle - yet attending the Tour de France with a motorcycle would dilute the idea of a bicycle race.

[meister eder]

and at least with individual freeze files, i can use it as a batch bounce function should i want to load my session into a different host.

No. I've once done exactly that to transfer a project to a Fairlight system. Yet in the middle of the process (early enough fortunately) we realized that you loose all the volume and panning automation, as they are not included in the freeze files.

So be careful with that! The 're-import' trick only makes sense for tracks that have no volume and/or pan automation and are set to 0dB.
This is why I keep calling for a "bounce all individual tracks at once" function for situations where OMF is no option.

[Lunch Money]

obviously, you just didnt understand what i said, no problem tho, cause i can be rather confusing

You're probably right. Whatever I have in my head didn't relate specifically to "generators" (whatever that is), so I have to admit that I took some of your meaning from extrapolation, and was thinking strictly in terms of freezing individual VST and still being able to manipulate them, which would be impossible.

Rather than trying to figure out what you said, I'll just take your word for it that it's possible. It's a rare day that I just take anyone at their word. <chuckle>

Neverwhere: I agree that individual freezes is NOT a problem. If I had the option, I'd prefer it. But I think there IS a time and place for global freeze, and it really is the most thorough way to free up resources for people whose machines are having trouble keeping up.

Greg

[LoRez]

I would contend that it does not dilute the idea of freeze but rather expands upon it.

The idea of a motorcycle also expands on the idea of a bicycle - yet attending the Tour de France with a motorcycle would dilute the idea of a bicycle race.

I get your analogy but I think this is shakey ground. You'd get disqualified for showing up on a motorcycle, but if you were allowed to race, you would blow everyone away. In software, you don't get disqualified for having more capability. Don't get me wrong, I see your point...I just don't completely agree with you. If giving me the ability to actually DO something with my frozen data is diluting freeze, then I guess I like my freeze slushy

[Lunch Money]

It's just counter-productive.

If you want to do something with it, don't freeze it... just render it and have done.

Greg