I would love to just direct-route signals to a group and watch the magic happen. I can get the direct routes to the groups, but all the SEND Fx are still in the sent channel. I’ve spent the last few days thinking about this. How do people make Alt Mixes for their projects. Just so you know, for me, I need to be able to listen in on the alt mixes as I write. Bonus points if Alt Mixes show up in the Export > Audio Mixdown. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
I think the easiest way is to open multiple alt mix projects simultaneously as @Monotremata already suggested. Especially, if you want to have full access to each and everything that a complex mix is made of.
You could make a copy of your main mix and run a mixdown that you import in the alt mix project and vice versa. That way, you can compare the alt mixes within the project that is currently activated. Switching between projects (activating one and deactivating the other) does not take long.
I think that might be the closest you get to do what you want.
I think maybe this over-complicates the issue.
I suspect that @Monotremata’s tongue was planted firmly in cheek when typing that response but it’s the obviousanswer. Save the project under a new name and then do an alternate mix!
Yes, but that also depends on the complexity of the project. If it is a full blown project - I totally agree. That’s indeed the master of desaster’s favourite recipe.
What we do in post in addition to using direct outs and “clever” routing is to just duplicate on the timeline. If I was working on a commercial for example I could either set up different versions with basically duplicate tracks going to different destinations (mix buses) using direct outs or simply finish one version, copy-paste it to later on the timeline, and then just mute / adjust whatever needs to be adjusted. With cycle markers it’s easy to batch export it all in one go.
In fact, it would be helpful knowing what kind of material and use case we are talking about.
A setup for work on a TV commercial requires different things than for songwriting or scoring. Which stage of the production are we talking about? Genre…?
Yes I agree. But things like muting can absolutely be a thing in TV commercials. In fact we often get splits from composers where different audio tracks have different subsets of instruments, and we might have different versions with different instrumentation. In that sense it is similar. Other changes that are technically the same problem is having different “tags” on them, like different sales percentages for different markets that are different for literally just 1.5 seconds within a commercial, and then we have like 10 different versions of them.
There is usually a way to get around the need to save-as and then open a different project per version.
But anyway, I agree with you, more specifics would be helpful.
Yes, I’m with you. That is why I was asking about the stage we are talking about. Post is working with different material than a composer.
One thing that everyone is always thrilled about though: If the client decides to make some last minute changes on an already approved cut. Can’t be that hard to adapt a composition that is perfectly in sync with each frame…
That’s cool. I understand what you were thinking. Yeah, mixing a song for a client I imagine I’d do what I usually do: “save as” Full, “save as” NoVox, etc. That method is money. It works.
As @MattiasNYC and @Reco29 mentioned this is for tv writing. We don’t know how they will use the music. All we know is that they will need options, alt mixes. The way I was handling the alt mixes, was to make separate files. I didn’t really care how good the alt mixes were, but listening to them was an eye opener because they really didn’t sound good on their own. They should sound good on their own, but mine didn’t. If there was a way to stop a signal from ever making a sound, that would be the ideal situation. The mute button kind of works like that, but not really. I believe the mute button is an automation tool, feel free to correct me on the mute button.
Anyway, someone said, “creativity is a messy process.” Writing cues and creating alt mixes can get really messy. My goal is to eventually hear the alt mixes as I’m writing the cue, this way I can change things around to make the alt mixes sound their best. Thanks for your help. Peace