I have a weird style in working in cubase in that what I tend to do is duplicate an entire track (vst instrument in most cases) and then make edits to the duplicated track. While I am doing that I go and disable the original track, and then “hide disabled tracks” in the visibility settings. The original track (now disabled one) is my track I can fall back to if I don’t like my edits on the duplicated.
Is this bad to do? I can end up with sometimes 20+ “disabled tracks” that have vst instruments on them.. Yes I understand I can go to track versions and create new versions but that doesn’t always work for me. I’ve noticed it does seem to help cpu when I do disable the unused tracks. Just wondering if its as effective as freezing. I tried to experiment but can’t really tell with the cpu meter gauges.
I don’t think this is weird at all, and if it works for you, keep working with that way. Disabling is saving more cpu/memory compared to freezing. If you freeze the track it will render the the track to audio and still playback. A disabled track is completely unloaded and stays silent when it’s played back.
If you’re on a pro version, you may also want to try out Export → Selected Tracks. This allows you to export a track and save it as a file on your computer somewhere. Then continue editing on the track and if you want to go back to the old version, you can re-import the track file into your project. That way you can go back, but you don’t need to manage a bunch of invisible disabled tracks in your project.
Thanks for the confirmation and response @Joshua_Reiners Glad to know I can continue like this.
I’ll test out what you are describing above with the export. I figure that would just export a .wav of the track/vst instrument just like render in place does but it sounds like it might export all the track info/vst/settings/chain/inserts/etc.
I literally disable every track I have rendered in place including midi tracks I have recorded to audio. I often will mix down all the renders go listen to the mix on some other monitors, car, etc. and determine “that cutoff frequency on the synth is too bright” or something like that. I then go and show all tracks and adjust the cut off frequency to my liking and re-render. I understand I can freeze/unfreeze, but what that doesn’t let me do is play with insert effects like I can with the render.
Disabling is actually more resource efficient than freezing.
A disabled track is fully unloaded so it uses no CPU or RAM. A frozen track still streams audio and keeps parts of the signal chain active. Your workflow is completely fine and commonly used for A B style editing.
Freeze is about quick bounce and unfreeze. Disable is about maximum resource savings. Use whichever fits the task.
I do the same thing - print to audio, disable track, hide. And if I really need to later I can always go back and enable it to make changes. Never experienced any issues and it helps a lot with CPU.
