Mixdown w/ Arrangement Track enabled works incorrectly

Cubase
1

Hi Steinberg.

I wonder about this feature when you are downmixing a project that has an Arrangement Track enabled and modified so that it leaves some areas of the mix project out.

When you select the area of the mix, and downmix it, then Cubase starts (or continues) the downmix from the beginning after first downmixing it from start to finish. So that the resulting downmix is exactly as long as the project without the Arrangement Track enabled. So if the mix’s original length without the Arrangement Track is, say, 6 minutes, and then when you use the Arrangement track to cut, say, 2 minutes off of the mix, then Cubase will continue downmixing from the beginning of the project and add these “missing” 2 minutes with the material from the beginning of the mix, with 2 minutes.

Why isn’t Cubase able to downmix the project with the Arrangement Track enabled so that the length of the downmixed file will be correct?

I have had to flatten the projects in order to be able to downmix the projects correctly but then of course I will not be able to modify them afterwards.

Shouldn’t the downmixing work correctly even if there is an Arrangement Track used and enabled? I possibly cannot be wrong about this.

Thank you for reading.

2

I have exported arrangements in the past and it was a little hit and miss I thought. I found similar things to you, although in my case I was exporting extra sections so it was cut down. I guess it’s not really something they’ve tried to sort out. But it would be great if it could simply trundle through the arrangement starting at the Left indicator (or the start of the arrangement) and stopping at the Right (or the end of the arrangement). Rather simple really.

BTW, have you tried real-time export, maybe the two modes are different?

I personally Save the project, flatten the project, and then export. Then I revert back to the Saved project. You can undo the flattening as well, but somehow I prefer to Revert as I think that the flattening process does so much to the project that it’s got to be a place for errors to creep in (call me paranoid!).

Mike.