mastering advice learned the hard way

I guess I should open this with "send your stuff to a professional" along with a wad of cash and a prayer they do it right.
 
However, if you are like me and have limited resources (having to pay out $1000/mo for health insurance ... ouch), and you have the Producer version and/or you have purchased a plug-in like Izotope Ozone ... you have the tools to attempt Mastering.  Assume that one bright day someone actually wants to give you money for your songs, some of which are a few years old, and you decide that with the new Sonar, new plug-ins, coupled with your ever-increasing experience recording ... to go back over your songs and fix them, prior to submitting them.   So you open the .bun files and the old mixes, and things are missing, things don't load, the master mix is gone, and basically you are screwed because you are an idiot.  The end result being you have to spend 3 weeks 14hrs a day fixing stuff.  Bummer.  This sucked BIG TIME.  I cannot express what a shocker this was.  I thought I backed everything up.  I am a backup nut.  So here is how to avoid future pain and misery, and save a whole bunch of time:
 
1.  Set up a Master Bus, and route everything through the Master on its way to your audio card.  When you press Mute on the Master Bus, there should be NO sound.  Modify your normal.template so that every new project you start is set up this way.  Why?  Because when you want to master your mix, you simply stick your plug-ins into the Effects box on the Master Bus.  If you need to change something in the mix, simply go change it, and you can A-B the master/un-mastered mix ... easily.  Or ... you can do it the way I wound up doing it ... er, was forced to do it ... and mess around with a bounced down or exported mix and wind up wasting a tremendous amount of time processing and re-processing tracks even with a quad-core CPU running at 3.2ghz.  I will never ever record anything ever again without setting my Projects up routed through a Master Bus.
 
2.  Before you 'leave' a mix and move on to bigger and better things ... BOUNCE ALL THE SYNTHS TO THEIR OWN AUDIO TRACK!  Bounce all the midi down too.  Otherwise you may one day be using Sonar X27, and open up that mix you made in Pro Audio 5, and it will be a complete bag of doo doo.  The synths won't load either because you don't have them anymore, or the new Sonar doesn't recognize them properly, or that patch you tweaked so carefully ... well its GONE.  Boo hoo.  A penny saved is a penny you don't have to dig to China to retrieve. 
 
3.  Now because you have used a Master Bus, and you have bounced down all the stuff that might disappear one shocking day ... hooray ... when you export the entire mix as a .bun file, and burn that to a DVD in a velvet box ... everything you need to re-create and re-master the mix ... well, its all there.  No sweat.  No tears.  No drinking yourself blind and gaining 10 pounds in the process trying to figure out what you did 7 or even 10 years ago.
 
That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

I've been pondering how to archive things in a way that avoids some of the issues you've mentioned. I figure what I'll probably do...
 
Create a folder for all exports so I have easy access to all the different files.
 
Usual stereo mixdown at 24 bits and whatever samplerate the project was recorded/mixed at. This will have some headroom left on the Master bus and be saved. It can then be available for sending off to a mastering house. It will also be tossed into a new project for me to master myself and that project would get exported to 16bit 44.1khz for my own personal use.
 
Bus export with effects. Again with some headroom left and it could be used for stem style mastering. I might also export another without effects... maybe.
 
Track export with effects and level/pan settings. All tracks exported with effects so if I want to do a volume remix, add or replace tracks or create a mashup I can without remixing. This also avoids issues like missing plugs or synths because they'll be right on the tracks.
 
Track export without effects or level/pan settings. This way I have just the raw audio. It wouldn't be mixed per se but I would make it so all the levels are nice and clear kind of like how you would capture things while recording. Then I could start completely from scratch if I wanted starting with good strong signals. I started working on an old album of mine a while back and was fortunate enough to have just the raw audio. I'd like to be able to go back to anything I create in this manner.
 
This all might take up a lot of disk space but I've lost some stuff to guys not archiving things and it was really upsetting.

Timeking
The more things you do the better; however, if you don't save the project as a bun file, the audio files that are somewhere in one of your potentially many /audio folders WILL NOT BE SAVED.  The .cwp files only --point-- to the .wav files in whatever audio folder they are in. 
 

Per-project folders save audio for the project in a single directory directly underneath the cwp. Bun files were rendered redundant when per-project folders were introduced years ago. If one failed to properly create a per-project folder for a project, a simple "Save As" with "Copy all audio with project" checked and proper path names in the Project and Audio path entries will fix the problem.

scook

Timeking
The more things you do the better; however, if you don't save the project as a bun file, the audio files that are somewhere in one of your potentially many /audio folders WILL NOT BE SAVED.  The .cwp files only --point-- to the .wav files in whatever audio folder they are in. 
 

Per-project folders save audio for the project in a single directory directly underneath the cwp. Bun files were rendered redundant when per-project folders were introduced years ago. If one failed to properly create a per-project folder for a project, a simple "Save As" with "Copy all audio with project" checked and proper path names in the Project and Audio path entries will fix the problem.

I really gotta learn more about this. Mainly how to point it all exactly where I want it which for archiving is usually my desktop so I can toss it on an external drive or disc. I'm sure it's simple enough though. The bundles just go in a neat little package without worry but i know they are unreliable. I'm sure the Per Project Folders could work in the same way but I just haven't attempted that type of save yet.

Timeking
The more things you do the better; however, if you don't save the project as a bun file, the audio files that are somewhere in one of your potentially many /audio folders WILL NOT BE SAVED.  The .cwp files only --point-- to the .wav files in whatever audio folder they are in. 
 
<...>
 
1.  Save-as the .cwp with the bounced synths to a new folder, which will copy all the raw wave files into that new folder
<...>
 

 
Aren't you contradicting yourself here...? Anyway, like scook said: no need for buns anymore. Whenever I finish a project (and I mean REALLY finished it), I save it as a new one with the 'Copy all audio with project' option enabled. Works like a charm. Gets rid of all the junk wavs too in one go.

scook

Timeking
The more things you do the better; however, if you don't save the project as a bun file, the audio files that are somewhere in one of your potentially many /audio folders WILL NOT BE SAVED.  The .cwp files only --point-- to the .wav files in whatever audio folder they are in. 
 

Per-project folders save audio for the project in a single directory directly underneath the cwp. Bun files were rendered redundant when per-project folders were introduced years ago. If one failed to properly create a per-project folder for a project, a simple "Save As" with "Copy all audio with project" checked and proper path names in the Project and Audio path entries will fix the problem.

The other problem with bun files is that if, for any reason, it becomes corrupt, or you lose it - you've lost the entire project - everything.
 
At least if you save as a normal cwp (and take backup copies) you still have a good chance to rebuild it from the associated wavs.

Another thing I would add is....if you use other plugins like Melodyne...you need to point Melodyne's files to be saved in your "Audio" folder along with your audio tracks....or Melodyne will not be able to find them if you open the project years later on a different machine.
 
When I add Melodyne to a project track, the first thing I do is tell Melodyne to save the processed files to the project's Audio folder.

...wicked
One thing I'll add to this: for every synth/effect you have, save a preset with your current settings for that VST/DX. I've had terrible terrible problems with updated versions not recognized as themselves, and lost settings to critical sounds. Lame to the max.

Yup had that happen a few times >.<

Yep, easy and reliable. Glad you kept on with it to see for yourself.

FWIW I have always used BUN files. There is just some thing nice an secure about having audio tracks saved as Audio, in a folder of my choosing. A single file in a single place.
 
I have not had a bun file corrupt on me and I have imported some pretty old files...the basic audio is always there, even if effects and synths fall by the wayside. Of course the folder with all the BUN files is also backed up in two external places

John
Is this thread about mastering or about archiving?

John, you hit it on the head.  Mastering a project is quite different from what is being debated here.  A mastering engineer is a highly skilled position that will take your (almost) final mix and make sure it is being prepped to burn a master cd (at 44.1 and 16bits), a vinyl master for pressing your new LP platter, and at higher rates for storage and digital transfers. 
 
Granted, some mastering houses will tell you to bring in the various tracks you recorded because the mix is bad, but they also will prep everything for the pressing and duplication companies. 

re: 2., that's something that annoys me a lot too.  If I open up a song in X2 that I created in e.g. Producer 8.5, Sonar tells me that it can't find Dim Pro, it can't find Rapture, it can't find z3ta etc.  There's no 'locate dll' option or similar.  I think it uses some kind of UID (Unique IDentifier) based method of determining whether or not a particular Synth is installed and my guess is that this identifier changes when Sonar's major version does (is this true?)  If anybody knows of a way around this issue, I'd love to hear it.

Cheers, I'll give that a try.  I usually only install the VST variants...

Sorry, but I likes my BUNs.
 
Redundancy is the key to survival!
 
Yes, you can have "per-project audio folders".
 
Yes, you can "freeze" all your MIDI tracks.
 
For archival/storage/transfer purposes, BUN files can be added insurance.  They are like ZIP files. However, they do work better with the software version that created them.
 
Another way to archive projects is to simply ZIP them in a folder:
 
1. Right-click anywhere
2. Select "New - Compressed (zipped) Folder"
3. Give it a name
4. Drag the entire project folder to it and its done
 
As far as corruption goes... it's everywhere.
 
 
Steve

Count me in as a fan of the "save all tracks as WAV files, one raw, one with effects and automation." I come from an analog tape background, so I regard saving the raw recordings as the most important part.
 
The obsolescence thing cuts both ways. In the future, there may be mixers, effects, or whatever that are BETTER than what you used. Having the raw audio files means you can take advantage of new technology while retaining the original performance.
 
Also I think this was mentioned, but when it comes to virtual instruments, make sure you save the MIDI files and presets you used for the instrument, as well as the rendered track. You may want to do some editing at some point.
 
As to bundles, I would not rely on them as your sole means of backup because yes, if they become corrupt, you're hosed. But they're very convenient.
 
Acid used to have a function back in the day where it saved each track as an individual WAV file. I think there are some other programs that do something similar, I'd like to see that feature in Sonar to help automate the backup process.