CD mastering - how to copy 12 projects into one?

I want to copy 12 songs/projects to one project and master them in one go. The projects should be one under the other, and then I want to shift the song track clips to their running-order positions.
 
Each song/project has all instruments already  mixed to stereo, except vox, bass, bass drum and overheads. These I'm keeping separate because I'm finding it hard to balance them so that the CD sounds coherent and not like a mixtape.
 
At the moment I am copying each project setup to a track template and importing those into the project I'm using to do the mastering.
 
But track templates do not copy the audio tracks themselves.
 
Is there an easy way to copy the tracks to the mastering project, too?
 
I don't really want to export and reimport them. I need something that doesn't do any processing or bit reduction.

CD Architect cannot mix separate tracks.

Why buy another product if I can do it better in Sonar.

Each song/project has all instruments already  mixed to stereo, except vox, bass, bass drum and overheads. These I'm keeping separate because I'm finding it hard to balance them so that the CD sounds coherent and not like a mixtape. 

Then maybe you're not ready to master it yet. Choose one song out of the 12 which you think sounds the best, then use that as a reference. Put it into all of the 11 other songs and mix the vox, bass, kick and overheads relative to that track for your consistency. After you've done that, bounce each individual song down to a single stereo track and re-import each back into SONAR and then get onto the mastering. You should be close enough then that a little eq should be enough to fine tune the bass and high levels for ultimate coherence. If it's still so far out that eq can't fix it, remix it again or send it to a professional.

I believe I understand the issue. For me, "mastering" means not only limiting and burning to CD, I guess you mean the same job. Sonar is getting adult in mastering (although it still lacks native metering), so it's more and more feasible to master within Sonar, and if you are the owner of the mixed sonar sessions you might take advantage of going back to the mixes to adjust and match not only levels between adjacent tracks but also match frequency content and balance voice/music, dry/wet reverb, stereo openness etc. so better to keep the original tracks in the mastering sonar session.
 
To answer your question, (I know that you might expect a different answer, but..) the fastest way to get it clean is the export audio dialog. You may select a range, then shift-A selects all tracks in that range, then file/export audio.. put the output to tracks output and this will save all tracks starting on time (this should save you a lot of time over dragging, and as you discovers track templateas are not convenient for this). To be precise, you need an export for mono files and an export for stereo files (you may deselect tracks in the export audio dialog), but it's still the fastest way.
 
A doubt: my individual song project is about 30-40 tracks, so 12 songs would be 360-480 tracks. Are you sure? It's sensible to export buses instead, for instance be sure to freeze the voices mix in the mix session, and also to freeze the multi-miked drums, and output 1 file for main voice and 1 for b-voices, just 1 stereo file for drums and 1 stereo for parallel drums, 1 stereo with all keys, you get what I mean?
You might get used to this flow in the mix sonar session by routing the single tracks to buses, you can then export buses output and keep a size of less than 10 tracks for each song in the mastering session (for about 100 tracks mastering sonar session).
 

Just in closing; with all the complexity, richness, workarounds, gotchas and so on in Sonar, I am working towards developing my own streamlined workflow.
 
That's my ultimate aim with all this.

Mastering and CD mastering can be viewed as two entirely different things. Trying to burn from a bunch of projects is bound to cause limitless problems and poor results.

Make the very best stereo files you can from the various projects then bring them into a proper CD burning app. There is no shortcut for this sort of thing unless you don't care about the quality of the CDs you produce.  

John


Mastering and CD mastering can be viewed as two entirely different things. Trying to burn from a bunch of projects is bound to cause limitless problems and poor results.

Make the very best stereo files you can from the various projects then bring them into a proper CD burning app. There is no shortcut for this sort of thing unless you don't care about the quality of the CDs you produce.  

John's got it nailed.

It sounds from your descriptions that your album isn't ready for mastering yet - you're still at the mixing stage.

Get your mixes sounding as good as you possibly can, then export each song @ 32 bit render depth with NO dithering.

Now you can import them into your mastering/album project

Start by creating as many stereo audio tracks as you want (12 in your case) and name each track with the name of the song

Click on each track in turn and import each of your songs to a different track

If you position the Now marker at the end of each song, or rather, where you want the next one to start, Sonar will import it to that exact point.

Once you've nudged them all to where the gaps between songs make artistic sense, I find it then helps to insert a marker at the beginning of each clip (song) for easy navigation.

THEN you can start the mastering process using whatever tools are needed.

Only then can you start thinking about CD burning.

At this stage you can do a final export, this time dithered down to 16 bit and @ 44.1kHz

Just like others have mentioned, I then import this lengthy 16 bit wav into CD Architect for burning. CDA can easily split your one long wav up into separate CD tracks. (It doesn't actually split your wav up it just establishes markers for the burner)

I think JazzSinger is pointing a new way of going to the end and I agree with him.
I know that people who master so far are different from the people who mix, record or play. In that case, the masterer has only access to a stereo mixdown of each song. When mastering  a full album from 12 songs by different authors, I used to do this with an audio editor (I use Adobe Audition).
But, in this era of big computers and growing DAWs, I think we can invent a new way of doing things that does not belong to experience made on past instrumentation, hardware & software. it's possible for the author to have access to mastering software and conceive to do it all within a package, and we're talking of Sonar. In this case, he has the original multi-track mixes and he can still go back to some elements of them (buses) to get a deeper cohesion among tracks.
I work as a sound engineer, yet I compose songs here and then. I now have collected a group of tunes: I recorded them over the past two years with different instruments and software tools: I really need to choose one reverb and use it on all tracks, choose similar voice/instrumental balance, one stereo width, two reference levels (for fast tracks and ballads), similar bass presence and general equalization, to get a similar result as a band closed in a recording facility for one week to play all tracks.
So I understand JazzSinger, who tries to put some elements of the mix in the mastering session, not only one stereo mixdown for each track. And I am sure this is the future (if not the present for Sonar).

Bristol_Jonesey

John


Mastering and CD mastering can be viewed as two entirely different things. Trying to burn from a bunch of projects is bound to cause limitless problems and poor results.

Make the very best stereo files you can from the various projects then bring them into a proper CD burning app. There is no shortcut for this sort of thing unless you don't care about the quality of the CDs you produce.  

John's got it nailed.

It sounds from your descriptions that your album isn't ready for mastering yet - you're still at the mixing stage.

Get your mixes sounding as good as you possibly can, then export each song @ 32 bit render depth with NO dithering.

Now you can import them into your mastering/album project

Start by creating as many stereo audio tracks as you want (12 in your case) and name each track with the name of the song

Click on each track in turn and import each of your songs to a different track

If you position the Now marker at the end of each song, or rather, where you want the next one to start, Sonar will import it to that exact point.

Once you've nudged them all to where the gaps between songs make artistic sense, I find it then helps to insert a marker at the beginning of each clip (song) for easy navigation.

THEN you can start the mastering process using whatever tools are needed.

Only then can you start thinking about CD burning.

At this stage you can do a final export, this time dithered down to 16 bit and @ 44.1kHz

Just like others have mentioned, I then import this lengthy 16 bit wav into CD Architect for burning. CDA can easily split your one long wav up into separate CD tracks. (It doesn't actually split your wav up it just establishes markers for the burner)

I do something similar to this - one stereo track per song.  However initially I line all tracks up at the same time point, and use the exclusive solo to AB them against each other for level, overall EQ etc..  I find each project can sound acceptable within itself, but I find myself EQing different genres  in different ways that need to be reined in a bit for a common project.  Also when I export the individual projects I usually leave the master effects off, and then glue the tracks together with the mastering toys on the combined project master bus - if I need to I can always bring the individual settings into that tracks channel.  Once I am happy with the side to side comparisons, then I will slide the tracks into CD order, although if I am going digital only I don't need to.

Cheers


Grif

Essentially I was looking for a quick way to get several projects into one project. From what you guys say, there obviously isn't a direct way, but thanks for the ideas to make it easier.

Mastering was indeed a separate process. The cutting engineer had to know the distance between grooves on an LP for a given running time. If the bass was too high, there was a risk of adjacent grooves cutting into each other, requiring bass rolloff.

If the material had too much high-end, added to the RIAA correction, this could saturate the cutting head amps, so judicious high frequency reduction was also often needed.

Add some compression to prevent the softest audio sinking into the noise of a record, and one begins to understand why mastering needed completely different tools and skills.

Today the person doing the mix has access to all the tools needed for mastering. Learning the skills is a matter of experience and personal application.

I do this as a paid hobby. I want to spend  my time on recording,  mix and mastering, and minimize time spent on exporting, importing, lining-up and so on.

The songs now go to their own busses where the mastering and finalizing tools are in the FX bins, off but ready and waiting for the mastering phase.
 
If a flaw becomes evident during mastering, I can turn off the mastering FX in the bus, fix the mix and then immediately return to mastering.
This is great.
Thanks again. Much appreciated!