Handling of frozen tracks is simply not good enough

Cubase
1

Cubase cannot do any of the following things, am I correct?

  1. Move a frozen part/event within a project (I mean, why? It’s just recorded audio???)
  2. Mute a frozen part/event within a project (this one also absolutely baffles me)
  3. Split or join a frozen part/event (this follows from the first two)
  4. Freeze/unfreeze tracks simultaneously.

Have any of these additions been made in C10?

Thanks for the info

Mike

2

Hi,

All of these would need to unfreeze and re-freeze the the track again.

Frozen track means there is an audio file, which is played back in the background, instead of the original event.

3

Thank you, I understand the freezing process. But, given that you’ve said yourself, it’s nothing more than rending the midi performance to an audio file, I have no idea why these audio events cannot even then be moved, or at the very least, muted.

4

Hi,

That would mean, the frozen file would need to be rendered again and again (in the background), once you make any (mentioned) change in your project. I’m afraid, that would be quite CPU expensive.

If you have an experience with the new Direct Offline Process, you get an idea.

5

I do, although Ableton handles this really easily (It’s one of the reasons I use two DAWs - although Cubase’s MIDI editing is still streets ahead of Abletons). But simply muting an event? I’m baffled as to why that requires any processing at all? And yes, I could obviously just change the mute state on the track, but it’s so much easier to simply toggle the mute state of an event. Anyway, none of the above can be done (which I wanted to check on), so thanks for the info/taking the time to reply.
Cheers
Mike

6

Hi,

Just one note to the Mute event. This would works as simple as you mentioned, if you would Mute the only one event in the Track. But, if you have multiple events in the Track, then it’s not so easy. In this case the frozen Wav file is one Wav file for the whole track. Moreover it’s not the whole track. If you have enough space in-between the MIDI Parts, the silence is not rendered. Then in the Wav file, there are specific markers, which says, where should Cubase start to playback this file again. In this case, to Mute one of multiple events is already some kind of process (or you could emulate an automation event, but then you have think of all following consequences).

As I said, it’s doable, but from my point of view, it would also bring some cons.

Maybe you can Render In Place instead of Freeze. Would this fit to your workflow better?

7

Yeah, render in place is ok - it just creates a second track, which adds to the visual clutter, especially when working on a larger project. The beauty of the freeze function is that it’s one press (although freezing multiple tracks is still a big miss for me), no duplication, and helps keep everything clear.

Anyway, thanks for your thoughts and explanations, most kind.

Cheers

Mike

8

+1

9

+1 Freeze multiple should be standard. Side note on rendering in place: There’s a consistent risk of crashing when I render in place even when my session bit rate is matched with the render rate. Also, I use Vienna with multiple instruments per instance. If I just want to render say, the cymbals on my percussion instance, and nothing else, render in place will render every track individually or I would have to mix down to one track. Other DAWs seem to have rendering and freezing together. I LOVE cubase, but these basic workflow issues make it frustrating and difficult to recommend.

10

+1 for Ableton style freeze or Studio One transform feature. Both are very flexible.

11

It’s hard to see why “Freeze/unfreeze tracks simultaneously” does not work with the modifiers as for Mute or Solo. Would be nice if in the following dialog there would be a small track count info, how many tracks you are about to freeze.

The basic editing of frozen track events seem to be a philosophical thing: Currently Cubase creates an audio file and locks all original parts. Since the lock function in Cubase allows no further editing you can’t do anything anymore.
So Steinberg would need to change the scheme from a normal lock to a, let’s say a frozen status (maybe snow flake symbol?). Technically I guess they’d have to add a meta layer to the replacement audio file where they can define time position in project, sample # start playback, sample # end playback, and mute on/off. Just like on other audio files.
Seems technically do-able.