How to easily apply an identical mix from one project to another one in progress?

Beeps, if someone give you the magic formula, I'd love to know about it. There is so much after the fact stuff going on if I understand it, that I would be flummoxed too.
 

This is were when I switched from using my Yamaha 01V to Sonar I immediately was disappointed.  I do a lot of live recordings and as you have said, once you've dialed in the first song the rest will follow suit.
On the 01V this was so simple. Get that first song sounding good and then let it roll through each song and apply small changes and save a scene for each song. This also gives the finished album continuity.
 
The only solution I have found was to totally pre meditate a template BEFORE you record. Then all the plug ins have the pre set save function. You get the first song right, save a pre set for each plug in and then re load it in each song.
 
Other than that your faced with getting the first song perfect. Erase the audio data from the tracks and "save as" a blank project.
 
Now just drag and drop the audio from the other songs to their respective tracks. 
I'm not sure what your talking about tempo ?? live recordings are not normally done to a tempo unless you actually used the projects as backing tracks too.
 

That's pretty clever!   The added comment about Mix Recall is the icing on the cake.

OK, if it is all audio then here is what I would do.
 
Setup the same track layout and bus layout in the (three so far?) projects. This is crucial. Even if one song has an extra track all three songs should have that extra track in the position in the of the TV.
 
Now think of Project 1 as the Album. So the song ends at (example) 4:30. Set a new marker at 5:00. Open song two. Select all tracks and use copy special and select everything. Go back to song 1 and position now time to 5:00 (or closest beat 1 of that measure). Select track 1 and Paste Special insuring that you select everything. Rinse and repeat for Song three.
 
Copy and paste special will copy and paste tempo, markers and automation etc.
 
Now you have to options. 
 
1. Do all the songs in the project
2. Do save copy as (naming each song) and then stripping out song two and three for song 1, strip song 1 and three from song 2 and strip song 1 and 2 from song 3.
 
Then as you work on the next song go back to 5:00 and import tracks one at a time to the relevant traks. Save copy as, strip out first song from song 4 and song 4 from song 1. Rinse and repeat. Or alternative now save the project as template and from song 4 on just import track respectively.
 
If it all audio and the audio is contiguous delete measures should work fine for the first two steps.
 
 

So I just tried my hamfisted Mixrecall "hack". Sadly it didn't work (or I'm just too dumb to trick it into loading the Mix scene).
 
I'm going to describe what I tried and maybe some of the programming gurus (or even a Baker) can take a whack at it.
 
So I was working on the premise that if Mixrecall is saving "scene" files in that special sub folder (labelled Mix Scenes in the project folder) that maybe I could copy that into the Mix Scenes folder of another, "identical", project and then "Recall" it in the new target project. Seems like that would work with some fiddling but I couldn't make it happen.
 
First I tried just copying the Mix Scene over to the target project folder then checking to see if it would just show up in the Mixrecall module in the project. Nope (didn't expect it to).
 
From there what I tried was creating a new Scene in the target project. This was just a "dummy" scene to get something showing up in the MR module and pointing it to the Mix Scenes folder.
 
I copied the REAL Mix Scene from the mixed project into the target project and renamed the file (in Windows Explorer) exactly the same as the "dummy" scene I just created and deleted the dummy scene.
 
The hope was that by using the exact same file name and removing the "dummy" file that this would trick MixRecall into loading the mix data. The mix scene name showed up in the MR module but loading it did not load the scene I created. It did SOMETHING but none of the effects or settings I wanted were loaded. I want to say it zeroed the controls but it didn't. Not sure what's up and am not going to investigate it too much more today.
 
I also opened up the Mix Scene file in Notepad to see if I could find a file "Title" or something that could be changed as well but it looks encrypted or using a programming language I am unfamiliar with (which is most of them). It was mostly symbols and garbledygook with a few human readable entries scattered throughout (track names).
 
Anyhoo... you guys see where I was going with this "hack". I just don't know enough about programming to make it happen so maybe Panu or our other programming maniacs could poke at it and see if it is indeed possible to make this happen.
 
I think getting this to work would be absolutely brilliant and useful for a lot of us.
 
Actually, maybe if Bill Jackson is around he could take a swing at it. He showed us some "hacks" to fiddle with the Drum Replacer stuff a while back so maybe his curiosity and insider knowledge could get this going.
 
For now I'll probably use the Track Templates method until my final mix. Still gotta test it to see if it will use my existing busses but either way it'll get the job done. Just a little less "automagic" than I was hoping for but it's good practice for me.
 
Cheers and thanks.

Or you could try my method.

Beep implied he is using lots of tempo changes and lots of little clip edits, which is why he didn't want to drag audio. Because yes, that would normally be simplest. If he can bounce all tracks to one long clip each that should also work. 

The drawback to my method of providing as much detail and reasonings for my madness as I can is that things tend to get lost in the wall or words.
 
Kind of a balance between making sure people have the deets and not burying the reader with my insanity. lol
 
Doesn't help that I seem to come up with the most ridiculous schemes to force my will onto the material. This is my first "full album" production so it poses all these new challenges whereas before for the "singles" I've hacked together I could just do whatever I wanted.
 
Meh... people have been doing this for ages so I gotta brain it up and just get it sorted.
 
Thank goodness for you lot.
 
Cheers.

Good stuff Beep - keep at it.
 
Just one reminder (I'm sure you know this already). If you're ONLY working with audio then tempo changes are totally irrelevant to your project, at least when it come to already tracked material. It's only when you delve into Midi-land that tempo/key/time sig rears their ugly little heads.

Yup. Thing is I;m correcting some CRAZY drift (very FAST hardcore) and there are some natural speed ups/slow downs that need to be accounted for too.
 
What I'm doing is going through each section of the tunes one at a time and using Slip Stretching (on grouped clips across all the tracks) to hard correct the parts that are supposed to be steady then massaging all the "speed up/slow down" parts by hand so they sound the way I want.
 
There are other issues in Sonar making this more difficult (like Grouped Clips do not obey Slip Stretching or Snap so it has to be done one track at a time for each edit and then I have to zoom WAY in to hand adjust the edits further to keep phase relations across the tracks).
 
That's the "first pass" in my correction scheme. Essentially just getting the overall material tight to a desirable tempo map.
 
Then I'll be using Audiosnap "Merge and Lock" stuff to tighten up specific hits and fills as well as comping together the best parts from both performances of each song (everything was recorded twice so I can swap out fills and vocal phrases). That's where I'm really gonna need the tempo map stuff intact.
 
The only things that REALLY matter are the drums and vox. I'll be retracking the bass and guitars myself.
 
As for MIDI I'll be doing some drum reinforcement/replacement so even though using MIDI extraction on a set audio scheme it would still be useful to have the tempo map in place for correcting any screwed up MIDI notes from the extraction.
 
After all the drums are set up and tight and the replacement guit/bass tracks are recorded I may actually then reimport the original vocal tracks to get rid of all the stretching mayhem then stretch them again in a much less intrusive way (instead of all the splits and audiosnap/stretching mayhem need for the drums I can just massage them in bulk in a more general way from the original clips).
 
So as you see... I'm going a little nutballers on this one. It's already starting to sound great though and is pushing my "skillz" to the max.
 
A lot of work... but very cool stuff.
 
Cheers, buddy.
 
;-)

@Sander.... I've reviewed some of the materials on the new Melodyne stuff (I haven't installed it yet) and honestly I don't think it's going to give me the finite control I need to make this happen. Also it would be a totally new learning curve and as much as I like Melodyne I find it a little awkward to use compared to just mangling things right inside Sonar.
 
This is extremely fast and transient laden stuff and based on previous tests using my current version of Melodyne (and various other auto transient detection/auto correct tools) it's just much better if I get right into the raw waves and do it all manually by sight and sound.
 
If the material weren't so off beat (like lots of flams and fills) and sonically rich (shreiker vox/heavily distorted guits) then it might be worth the extra study/experimentation but, as I said, based on previous experiences with such tools on this type of material it's actually easier to manipulate it all manually. This also provides much better results.
 
Basically this type of technology is great but it hasn't caught up enough to "blast beat" and shreiker/shredder material.
 
Honestly I don't think it ever really could because how is a program supposed to quantize or anticipate user needs when the material is so complex and erratic.
 
For laid more laid back stuff that actually has something for the program to hook into and correct I'm sure it's great. For this stuff... it still requires a bone bowl full of reasonably proficient grey matter to make the artistic decisions.
 
I should point out that I am trying to preserve as much of the natural performances as possible as opposed to total quantizing and/or applying percentages of quantizing.
 
The clip stretching does this nicely. Like I find a section that speeds up/slow down and choose an "anchor" point before some major change in the song. I make the split there and slip stretch that spot to the appropriate measure. Then everything in that section more or less lines up to the timeline and I haven't thrown transients all over the place willy nilly (with quantize/humanize functions) or ruined the natural flow of the original performance.
 
All the while retaining phase across the tracks.
 
The new Melodyne supposedly takes such things into account but as I said it's not really worth diving balls deep into all that just to find out it's gonna fail like so many other "magic" correction programs have for me in the past.
 
Once I get to the end of this project (the time correction part) I may make a video of the process I'm using on an unfinished song we tracked. Some of the Sonar quirks are massive, time consuming pains in the posterior but the way I'm doing it works amazingly well for final product/sound quality.
 
Anyway... as I said this project/plan has been MANY years in the making and actually one of the three primary reasons I bought Sonar/updated my DAW.
 
1) Was access to virtual instruments to write on my own since I lost my bandroom.
 
2) Have a fully functional DAW to record audio for guit lessons (including MIDI stuff)
 
3) Do this type of intense correction/mixing work on the piles of old band sessions I have kicking around. Essentially at least 4-5 albums worth of stuff from multiple bands that's been languishing as I learned (and continue to learn) the craft.
 
Cheers.