I’m sure I’m not alone in creating a lot of tracks when developing a song, some of which become redundant over time, but I don’t want to delete them altogether. So I tend to put them all in a folder called ‘Unused’ at the bottom of the main workspace.
The problem with this is:
a) they still appear in the mixer, unless I explicitly mark them as hidden from the mixer view
b) I sometimes forget they are there and they produce ‘phantom’ parts that I take a little while to track down (being a bear of little brain)
c) if I forget to switch off all the plugin effects, they’re still using up processing power (or in the case of PowerCore, the effects have to be removed from the channel to stop them using PoCo juice)
So what would be great would be to nominate a folder (just one per project) as an ‘unused tracks’ folder. This folder would behave like any other folder, except that for all tracks put into it (audio or MIDI), it would:
a) automatically hide the tracks from appearing in the mixer, and
b) would disconnect all outputs (both output busses and sends) – maybe switching the track into the ‘disabled’ state, which would also switch off all insert fx to save processing power
The tracks would become active in all ways again if removed from the folder later on.
I like this idea. Yes, my mixer gets way too cluttered with alternate takes, tests, experiments etc that I want to keep around for reference. Although having to move them to a separate folder would be less useful to me than just being able to put it into that “grayed-out” state where it is. Sometimes I want to keep it in the folder it’s in for organizational purposes. But I’d like it to visually appear different (grayed out, or smaller, or “closed down”) and, as OP mentioned, be detached from the mixer, stop using resources, etc.
Good idea. I’d also like to be able to shrink, mute, and detatch tracks from the mixer, whilst in the project window. A sort of “deep freeze” that frees up both screen real estate and resources.
I like the ProTools method, particularly, because you can hide tracks so quickly and yet they are ratained in their order. Essentially PT keeps a master list of all tracks in a separate window and they are hidden/shown/enabled/disabled using that list and then from there they appear or not in the mixer and the project window.
But until that happens, I do use a seperate folder to put unused tracks in a just mute / disable the entire folder. It doesn’t hide the mixer tracks though nor disable the plug-ins, so this is a good idea.
IMHO a very good Idea how to do hide unused tracks in the mixer. It has been discussed here quite a few times, but this would be a very elegant solution.
So + 1
After reading Gargoyle’s description of the PT method, I like that one even better. That way you can keep tracks where they are (maybe they’re in folders already) and can hide/unhide them without losing that organization. But some way of quickly getting them in/out of the mixer would be very helpful.
+1 first time post on the new forum. This is such a simple but brilliant idea. Having just spent 15 minutes trying to locate a doubled vocal line that was not supposed to be there but was hiding in my “dump” folder. it would be great if these tracks were automatically disabled and unable to bite you later.
+1
Great idea, but the protools method would work as well. You could even have a hybrid of the two. Put a disable track check-box in the inspector. When checked the track would be turned off and moved into the disabled folder. Later if you wanted to turn the track on again, go into the disabled folder, uncheck the box and the track moves itself back to where it came from.
Interesting comments! Perhaps a different approach to the folder idea, a bit like Raino’s suggestion, since we already have the facility to disable a track, is just for disabled tracks to not show up in the mixer? There seems little reason to keep them popping up there.