Hello all. Been happily mixing all day and got my drums sounding decent but the project is starting to run a little hot so I figured I'd freeze the drum tracks before moving on to the rest of the instruments. I spent a lot of time and brain pain trying to get many of these tracks to be mono but Freeze is now turning them back into stereo tracks. I checked the Freeze Options but do not see any stereo/mono options. I have no idea why it would do this or how to change it.
 
Obviously I'm missing something here but I don't know what. I don't like the idea of working on the rest of my mix with drum tracks that are not exactly how I set them up (because they will likely be unfrozen again before mixdown to do final tweaks and what not).
 
This strikes me as very odd. All I wanted was to freeze the effects to save resources.
 
Any insights on this would be appreciated. Thanks.

This is because you are freezing tracks with stereo effects in the FX bin.  If you freeze the snare track and it has a stereo reverb, the resulting rendered (freezed) clip will be stereo.
 
You can also check the interlieve button from each track to see if its set to stereo or mono before freezing.
 
Daniel

Thanks for the reply. I actually don't have anything in the FX bin. Only ProChannel modules (compressors, sat knob, eq and on track with the Expander/Gate). Should all be mono. However I didn't realized the interleave button would affect this. I'll look at that. Another thing I just realized is likely screwing things up is these were stereo clips converted to mono. I figured they would freeze as mono as well.
 
Oh well, at least I know that it's possible to get a mono freeze. I just thought this was yet another instance of Sonar trying to turn everything it can into stereo. Drives me a little batty because I'm so used to my mono tracks just being mono until they hit the busses.
 
Now I guess the big question is... by having them frozen as stereo will it change the audible output? I'm assuming if what I'm hearing before the freeze is stereo (even though it's not displaying as stereo in the clip or faders) that the freeze should be identical.
 
Really all I need to know is that nothing is going to change.
 
Thanks again for your reply.

Oh and if I use the interleave button and it does end up producing a mono clip will THAT be the same as the pre freeze audio or will there be summing... again? I know when I converted these to mono in the first place they got louder but I left it because it sounded alright.
 
Next time I set up my drums I will be making sure everything is set up properly from the start. This is the result of the either/or approach the Insert Synth dialog works when BFD need both mono and stereo outputs. I just didn't know enough when I started the project and it's too late to go back now.
 
Cheers.
 

Beep, back up a minute.
 
Are you freezing the SYNTH or are you freezing the TRACKS?
 
These will give you completely different results depending on the options you set in the relevant place.
 
I always recommend freezing just the synth, as all of your mixing options remain open, including the Fx bin, Pro Channel etc.
 
Right click the midi icon of the vsti and under Freeze select Freeze Options to decide what will and what will not be frozen.

Hi Jonesey. It's an audio track (the drum kit bounces I did). As I've added/turned on PC modules my CPU meters are slowly inching upward so I figured I'd freeze them. Didn't realize they suck up that much juice. However it's only my first core that's getting really high (like three quarters of the way to max). The rest of the cores seem to be hovering around the first quarter. I'm guessing the first core will just spill over to those ones (I hope or I'm screwed). I've still got all my bass and guitar tracks to mix and I was gonna try Perfect Space on my reverb bus. Seems to me that could really push things. Thought this computer could handle this a little better but I guess I'll try upping my interface buffers a bit more (already pretty high).
 
As far as the stereo thing I did realize something just now in the shower... if I bounced these to mono then I'd probably lose my pan settings. Don't want that. Kind of dumb of me not to realize that before.

hmm... you did make me think about something but I'm not sure it'll make a difference. I've got all the MIDI tracks archived but didn't freeze the synth. Is it possible that might save some juice? I figured if there was nothing going through it it wouldn't drain resources. Not sure what would happen freezing a synth with nothing going through it either. Seems like it might provoke a crash borne out of sheer confusion. Meh. I'll play around with it.

Bristol_Jonesey
Beep, back up a minute.
 
Are you freezing the SYNTH or are you freezing the TRACKS?
 
These will give you completely different results depending on the options you set in the relevant place.
 
I always recommend freezing just the synth, as all of your mixing options remain open, including the Fx bin, Pro Channel etc.
 
Right click the midi icon of the vsti and under Freeze select Freeze Options to decide what will and what will not be frozen.

Jeez, how'd I miss that?
I just always assumed they were the same.
Thanks for the tip! 
 
Is it possible later to later freeze the track & effects? (double freeze?) Or would you have to bounce?
If edit frozen clips (slice, dice, copy, crop, move them around, etc) when you unfreeze you loose all your changes.
 
 

Pg 909 in the x3 reference manual explains. For X2 I don't know the ref page but it's heading is in the chapter on Mixing under subheading Freeze Tracks and Synths

The difference between freezing a synth and a track is that

Freeze synth via synth rack - audio bounced to synth track and synth disabled
Freeze track - audio bounced to new clip and anything in the fx bin is turned off. If you didn't insert your synth via the fx bin but used the synth rack this allows the synth to stay online hence not saving any CPU hit.

So if you want to freeze a track using fx frreeze the track. If you want to freeze a track that has a synth then freeze the synth