MuTools

Ambient Mechanics · Post by **Ambient Mechanics** » Thu Jul 18, 2013 5:58 am

I just spent the best part of the last 6 months working on an album in MuLab and have had nothing but a great time doing so..until last night.

I mixed down all of the tracks individually..10 in total..and only 3 of them ended up as complete playable WAV files..the rest were either blank, with no noise at all..or about the first 5 seconds of the track!

Now, I should point out that I have not installed any new software recently..nor did I get any sort of error message while using MuLab..and any VSTs I'm using have never caused any problems with MuLab, as I have used them before without issue and had even bounced down the very same tracks before and all of them were the exact WAV file I expected them to be.

I am at a total loss to explain why this has happened..and I really need to get the tracks in question mixed down, so I can send them off to be mastered.

Does anyone know anything about this sort of issue..or anything I can do to either sort it out or work around it?

I'm running MuLab on a Windows 7 Pro 64 bit system, with 32 GB ram and an i7-3770 @ 3.40GHz

The version of MuLab I am running is MuLab UL 5.1.5 64 bit

Reincke · Post by **Reincke** » Thu Jul 18, 2013 8:24 am

A very dumb question (based on own experience): Do you have any automation tracks, e.g. for volume of instrument tracks? If so, did you activate the related automation track while mix down an instrument track?
JR

Ambient Mechanics · Post by **Ambient Mechanics** » Thu Jul 18, 2013 2:09 pm

Thanks for the reply, Reincke..and I have a very dumb question in way of an answer..how do I do that..and/or what exactly are you talking about?

I did have some tracks that I added automation tracks to for gain in general..but I did this before in the past and never had any problems.

In fact, I didn't do anything else that I usually do, just this time most of the tracks didn't seem to export properly. If I am doing something wrong..or failing to do something I should be..then, please, let me know.

Thanks in advance.

Reincke · Post by **Reincke** » Thu Jul 18, 2013 3:05 pm

Using automation is wonderful, but sometimes a bit like opening pandora's box. Possibly the related gain has a actual value of zero and keep it until gain will be explicitly automated later in your song. Are you "gaining" the "Master" rack or individual instruments? In the latter case I guess you separate the tracks by switching the related track to "solo" and mixdown that track. Did you also activate theautomation track?

I usually initialize automated parameters with a part at the very beginning of an automation track, e.g. with a value of 100%. Please let me know if this will help.
JR

Ambient Mechanics · Post by **Ambient Mechanics** » Fri Jul 19, 2013 1:03 am

Thanks again, Reincke..I don't have any automation on the Master..just individual individual instruments. To be honest, I'm a little confused about your question, "Did you also activate the automation track?" How do you do that? I mean, aren't automation tracks already activated simply by adding them to the original track? Well, that's what I always thought, as any time I have added automation in the past to a track there has never been an issue like this..and, I don't remember having to activate anything.

Anyway, I'll have a play around with things and let you know what transpires.

Thanks again.

MuTools · Post by **MuTools** » Fri Jul 19, 2013 5:36 am

When you mixdown everything, then does that mixdown sound as expected? If yes, you could mute tracks one by one and mixdown each time, just so to find the step that causes 'the problem'. Hopefully this way you'll find the reason.

Ambient Mechanics · Post by **Ambient Mechanics** » Fri Jul 19, 2013 9:54 am

A little history might help explain things a bit better..

I started out with the goal of producing an album that could be played as one long continuous track..or in the usual way, as in individual tracks.

With this in mind, I wrote a number of compositions in MuLab, each running into the other, which I then bounced down to WAV files. SO, if song 1 had, say, 10 different parts/tracks used to make it..I just soloed those and mixed them down into one WAV file..and then did this for each song/track on the album.

AS I said before, everything sounds just fine when played through MuLab..it's just the bounced down/exported WAV file that seems to have problems.

Anyway, I'll give that a try and see if I can isolate just which part is causing the issue. Once I either have or haven't got that info I'll get back to you guys on here.

Thanks for the help so far..it's really appreciated.

MuTools · Post by **MuTools** » Fri Jul 19, 2013 10:07 am

Just to better understand:

Do you mean that you have 1 very long composition with all the music on your album in that single composition, each 'song' after the other so resulting in a looong composition?

Or do you mean that each of your songs is on separate tracks in the same MuLab composition, so that you have a composition with many many tracks?

Or do you mean that you have a single MuLab session with as many compositions as you have songs on your album?

Ambient Mechanics · Post by **Ambient Mechanics** » Fri Jul 19, 2013 6:56 pm

I mean I have a single MuLab session with as many compositions as you have songs on your album?"

I have one session with 10 compositions..staggered from left to right diagonally down the screen..so the first copostion is on the top right..the second starts just where the first one ends..and so on trough a total of 10 tracks.

Hope this makes sense.

MuTools · Post by **MuTools** » Fri Jul 19, 2013 7:57 pm

I'm still not sure how you mean it. Pls post a screenshot if that's quick & easy 4 u.

Ambient Mechanics · Post by **Ambient Mechanics** » Sat Jul 20, 2013 2:42 am

Hope this helps..

You can only see most of the first 8 tracks..the others go down off screen. I have MuLab across two screens, but I couldn't work out hos to grab both at the same time..hence just one screen in the pic above. Anyway, you can only see tracks on the left screen, due to the way they stagger down to the right.

When I mixed down each track individually, I soloed all the parts of that track and mixed down only those which were soloed.

By the way, I have yet to carry out your suggestion about muting tracks before I mix down. Will post later what I find out..if I find out anything.

arkmabat · Post by **arkmabat** » Sat Jul 20, 2013 3:23 am

Just to be on the safe side, is it a limitation of the version you are using?

ghettosynth · Post by **ghettosynth** » Sat Jul 20, 2013 6:27 am

I don't know mulab, but it sounds like there's either some interaction between your soloing method and the render, or, there's something strange going on when you have many minutes of silence before you get to the place where the track starts.

That said, what you're doing sounds like a recipe for mistakes. I would just un-solo ALL tracks, render the thing as one LONG wave file, and then cut the wave file at a a good point between each track.

pljones · Post by **pljones** » Sat Jul 20, 2013 7:15 am

Does this one sound similar?
http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=384694

If you're only dealing with WAV files and no plugins, I wouldn't expect so, though.

MuTools · Post by **MuTools** » Sat Jul 20, 2013 8:55 am

Hey Solaris65, is there a reason why you do it that way? Are you sure this is the most comfortable way for you? Did you think about putting your 10 songs in 10 different compositions within the same session. That way they would still share the same sound & mix setup. Creating new compositions within a session can be done via the main SESSION menu or via the browser (Composition section -> Options button).

MuTools

KVR Audio

Anyone had this problem with mixdowns?