Exporting BEFORE mastering -- how to?

hello. I finished all the mixing, it sounds fine, so next I will master it with Ozone. So I will mix it all down to one WAV file, open up a new project, add ozone and master it. HERE COMES THE QUESTION.  Is it OK to export to WAV with the same parameters as the project (48Khz/24 BIT), NO DITHER? Or does it have to be higher? I know that I will "dither it down" to 16 bit  at the end with ozone... 

ALSO, the new project in which I will master.. What should the number of Bits and Audio Sampling be? Also the same as the original project?   

Thanks, I hope it makes sense.

Yes, leave it at the highest rate/project rate and export it without dither. Dither comes at the end along with the downsampling to 44.1/16.

I normally take the lazy man's way and pop O4 into the master buss and "master" from within the project. That seems to work just fine. I have done as you say, and export the wav and then import it to a new project and polish from there. 

The advantage to exporting first is that the new "mastering project" has only one FX to deal with in real time so the resources are generally available to run it without a strain.

Exporting to a mastering project..... just use the same parameters as the project.... the one that counts is the final export because that one should be compatible with commercial CD player standards so it will play on all the players out there.

I record in 24 bit and always export to 44.1 @ 16

THANKS GUYS!!!  I couldn't do what Kalle Rantaaho suggests because of computer power... but it sounds good.

thanks again!

Yeah .... Kalle is correct. When you don't need a track in a project you should Archive it. If you simply MUTE it, the track and all it's plugs are still processed by your computer and therefore CPU resources are used even though you are not hearing the track.....

However.....

when you archive a track, ALL of the plugs and things associated with that track are exempted from the processing loop and resources are available to do other things in the project.

Kalle Rantaaho


One way to keep the file tree simple:

Bounce the mix to one stereo track inside the project. Then archive or mute (depending on your PC power) all the other tracks and do the mastering and exporting normally.

The advantage of this is that you can very fluently create a new mix on a new track, if you need to, master it and compare.

This is exactly the same as exporting and then importing to another project for mastering, except that with this method you have a more simple file tree and all mix versions in the same place more easily reachable.

+1 to this approach.

Other advantages are you can master different versions for different requirements and keep them all together.

Also if you need to come back to the file at some point in the future everything is in the same place no rummaging around the hard drive trying to remember where the various sub-projects went.

Even if you use and external app. to do the mastering you can still import the final stereo file produced by your mastering app. back into the main project for storing it all together.  Use Sonar's File info to document the project too as you may be able to remember what your thinking was next week but 6 months down the line you'll likely be scratching your head as to why you did this or that in the project.

The drawback to keeping everything together of course is if you lose the file or it gets corrupted you've lost the lot, but that shouldn't matter too much as we all have good long term back-up strategies here by now, don't we?