I’m trying to set up a mastering session in Cubase. It works great the way I have it set up, except it seems to be rendering all the tracks even when there is no audio on that track. It’s running slower than real-time.
I have each song placed one after the other on separate tracks- with different plugins treating them. Then I have treatment on the master bus that gets applied to everything at the end.
I’ve got cycle markers set for each song so that I can batch export (which is great).
The export itself seems to be processing ALL the tracks, even though at any given time, there’s only 1 track with any audio events active on it while the rest are empty.
Is there a better way to set this up and still get batch export and not have to use automation on plugins? Perhaps a way to disable tracks via automation?
If you have cycle markers setup and simply advance to the next marker when you do the File/Export/Export Range then select the cycle marker you want to mix down you should ONLY get the mix down between the cycle marker loop range
Also, under Export Option on that page make sure the Real Time is UNCHECKED
I would simply delete those unused tracks then do my export. When you close and it asks if you want to save the project just say no. Cycle marker will export EVERYTHING in that cycle range so if you have empty tracks in that range it will do those as well
I set up mastering sessions in very similar manner and indeed there’s no way of exporting cycle markers and automatically disable unused tracks at the same time. Slower than real time sounds strange though.
However, another way is render in place with ‘complete signal path & master fx’ ticked. That way just the selected events get rendered without taking the other tracks into account. Don’t know if that’d be much faster (RIP sometimes seems slow compared to export) but worth a try.
Per the OP:
“I have each song placed one after the other on separate tracks- with different plugins treating them. Then I have treatment on the master bus that gets applied to everything at the end.”
If one needs diff processing per song which is usually the case then this is the way to do it
Well, I learned to enjoy the break simply The reward is that after Cubase has finished, everything automatically has a proper naming scheme and I don’t have to care about anything later on.
Anyway, sometime waiting sucks. That’s why I’ve thought about solutions for speeding the process up myself. Depending on what plugins I use it can help to tick that box in preferences that doesn’t process VST3 plugins with no signal present. But mostly there are some UAD goodies involved here which makes any ideas obsolete (rendering UAD is slow as signals have to be send back and forth between Cubase and the dsp cards).
The reward is that after Cubase has finished, everything automatically has a proper naming scheme and I don’t have to care about anything later on.