Workflow on mixing tracks

[Jonnie]

Hello

I am new to this so my workflow might not match other people's but I do find the mix and mix and render options a little awkward to use.

I am over dubbing riff by riff with sometimes as many as ten takes for each riff.

I would ideally like mix and render to simply include tracks that are currently audible when I press play - could be a function of both the mute and solo settings
on individual tracks.

Alternatively if the mix and render functionality absolutely has to work by including only selected tracks then I would like to have a menu option that says "select all audible tracks" - again all tracks that by virtue of not being muted or having "solo" set will contribute to the sound if I press play.

At the moment I am using mute to turn off all but one version of each riff, it would be nice if mix and render followed on naturally from this and mixed in all
the riffs I am currently listening to. At the moment I have to scroll down the screen manually selecting the riffs that are unmuted.


Thanks Jonnie

[kozikowski]

Good idea.

Koz

[Robert J. H.]

Yes, it's rather awkward.
I do regularly fall into this trap.
I often mix and render all tracks (to determine the overall gain).
However, the muted tracks are then included as well, the click track for example.
It's a nuisance to hunt down all the muted tracks and deselect them (or the other way around).
What about a selection command like "Deselect Muted Tracks" or better a command under Edit->Select->In all audible Tracks.

Robert

[Gale Andrews]

Edit->Select->In all audible Tracks.

Seems a reasonable idea to me.

Gale

[steve]

Edit->Select->In all audible Tracks.

I presume that you mean "not muted" tracks (a track that contains silence or white-space in the selected region is not audible).

The current behaviour is a bit strange in that the track Pan, Gain and amplitude envelopes are taken into account, but not Mute and Solo. If we are "mixing", then shouldn't Mute and Solo also be taken into account? On a real (hardware) mixer, if a track is muted then it is not in the mix. In Audacity, when we export, muted tracks are not in the mix, so why the special case when we "mix" from the menu item? Perhaps we should also have an additional "bounce tracks" option that renders the track "data" (one or more selected tracks), ignoring Solo, Mute, Envelopes, Pan and Gain.

[Robert J. H.]

Edit->Select->In all audible Tracks.

I presume that you mean "not muted" tracks (a track that contains silence or white-space in the selected region is not audible).

The problem was to include the solo states in the description.
There might be 5 tracks that are not muted and 2 others with solo pressed, what would you expect should happen, mix from 7, 5 or only 2 tracks?
I think that we agree that all tracks should be selected that are send to the playback routine, but how to express that nicely?

The current behaviour is a bit strange in that the track Pan, Gain and amplitude envelopes are taken into account, but not Mute and Solo. If we are "mixing", then shouldn't Mute and Solo also be taken into account? On a real (hardware) mixer, if a track is muted then it is not in the mix. In Audacity, when we export, muted tracks are not in the mix, so why the special case when we "mix" from the menu item? Perhaps we should also have an additional "bounce tracks" option that renders the track "data" (one or more selected tracks), ignoring Solo, Mute, Envelopes, Pan and Gain.

What do you have in mind exactly, I mean, would it be a mixdown to stereo, as usual or rather an export option in order to send the tracks to another application or mixing engineer?

One thing that would be extremely helpful to me were the ability to enable/disable the pan (and gain) sliders for all tracks temporarily, a sort of bypass.

[steve]

I think that we agree that all tracks should be selected that are send to the playback routine, but how to express that nicely?

Yes, that's what I mean too. The solo button overrides the mute button when both are down on a track, so "playing tracks" are tracks that are not muted or are soloed. I would call that "the mix".

What do you have in mind exactly, I mean, would it be a mixdown to stereo, as usual or rather an export option in order to send the tracks to another application or mixing engineer?

Currently, when we "mix and render", the selected tracks are mixed post pan, post gain, post envelope, pre mute, pre solo. That seems odd and unexpected to me.
I'm proposing that "Mix and Render" should be called "Mix Down" and that it is post everything. In other words, when you mix down selected tracks, the new track sounds like the selected tracks. You get what you hear.

To be totally flexible, we could have "pre / post" switches for all of the playback modifiers, so that gain, pan, envelope, mute, solo could be individually set for pre or post mix, but I think that is too complicated. As a compromise, I'm suggesting that we cater for the two most likely cases:

1) (default), you get what you hear. We call this "mix down", and it mixes down all selected tracks, taking into account the gain, pan, envelope, mute, solo, and possibly in the future any other real-time effects that are active for the track. There are two sub-options when "mixing down". (a) The original tracks are removed (default) or (b) The original tracks are retained, which we call "mix down to new track".

2) A second option provides a simple summing of the data in all selected tracks. This works on the raw track data and is "pre" (ignores) the track gain, pan, envelope, mute, solo, and any other real-time effects. We call this "Bounce Track Data" or something similar. "Bouncing" always "bounces to a new track" and the old tracks are retained. I think that ideally, the "selection" should remain on the original track(s), which would then make it easy to remove the original tracks if they are no longer required.

I think that the first (default) option is by far the more useful for audio production, but the second may be useful when working with non-audio signals.

The only way that we can provide the optimal mixing options for all cases would be to make all the controls switchable between pre/post mix, which I think is too complicated. The above proposal may be sub-optimal for some fringe cases, but by providing "pre" and "post" options we do not prohibit any use case.

[steve]

One thing that would be extremely helpful to me were the ability to enable/disable the pan (and gain) sliders for all tracks temporarily, a sort of bypass.

On a hardware mixer there are often separate "main" and "monitor" mixes. We don't do that in Audacity because to do it properly requires two sound cards.
On a hardware mixer where there are separate "main" and "monitor" mixes it is often possible to "solo" a track in the monitor mix without affecting the main (out front) mix, and this "soloed" monitor mix is often pre-pan, pre-fader.

A "possible" way that we could do something similar in Audacity would be to have an optional third button called "Monitor" (disabled by default). When enabled and pressed down, you would hear the raw track data for that track.

Thinking about it, this could be a more useful alternative to the "bounce tracks" idea. If the "monitor" button is down on all selected tracks, then "mix down" would be the same as the proposed "bounce tracks".

[Gale Andrews]

Edit->Select->In all audible Tracks.

I presume that you mean "not muted" tracks (a track that contains silence or white-space in the selected region is not audible).

Yes, muted in terms of grayed waveform, not necessarily that the Mute button is down, so different to the meaning of Tracks > Mute/Unmute All Tracks.

The current behaviour is a bit strange in that the track Pan, Gain and amplitude envelopes are taken into account, but not Mute and Solo. If we are "mixing", then shouldn't Mute and Solo also be taken into account? On a real (hardware) mixer, if a track is muted then it is not in the mix. In Audacity, when we export, muted tracks are not in the mix, so why the special case when we "mix" from the menu item?

Presumably so that the rule of those first order menu items working on selected tracks is maintained?

Perhaps we should also have an additional "bounce tracks" option that renders the track "data" (one or more selected tracks), ignoring Solo, Mute, Envelopes, Pan and Gain.

I don't know how many options we can have. Presumably any item that does anything other than current mix and render should be in a Mix Special submenu?

This isn't new but I noticed that duplicating tracks does not respect "Simple" Solo button mode. Duplicate one soloed and one muted tracks and you now have two soloed tracks that breaks the "Simple" rule of only one track soloed. Presumably in that case all newly created tracks should be muted.


Gale

[steve]

I noticed that duplicating tracks does not respect "Simple" Solo button mode. Duplicate one soloed and one muted tracks and you now have two soloed tracks that breaks the "Simple" rule of only one track soloed.

An interesting point.
It's not actually breaking any rules because the "Simple" solo button behaviour does support soloing multiple tracks (shift + click). "One solo track only" is just the default (click with no modifier key) behaviour.
It looks to me that duplicating tracks does the right thing in that it "clones" the tracks (makes an exact copy), including their envelopes, pan, gain, name, view, mute and solo.