Tracking Out Beats

  • warzone (nov 5-9) signup begins in...

Daymo

ILLIEN
ill o.g.
I'm trying to track out a beat from FL Studio into Audition as WAV files. The way I'm doing it is by soloing each track (i.e Kick Drum, Snare Drum, Hi Hat etc) and exporting each track as a WAV file. The problem I'm having is that the WAV file for each track ends up being around 97mb, so for a pretty simple beat the combined size of the tracks comes to 970mb.

What am I doing wrong here?

Any advice would be appreciated as I need to track a few beats out for a dude to mix and if the simplest beat is 970mb, my more complicated ones are gonna be through the roof.

Cheers
Daymo
 

Krazyfingaz

ILLIEN
ill o.g.
Battle Points: 2
what I would do is render the track as a mp3 open them in audition, do the process of mixing and then after the finshed product I would render it as a wav. i'm sure some one else may have more advise.
 
S

ShowcaseBeatz

Guest
Try doing it in mono.

It'll cut it down in half.

But 97 MB is quite big for a wave file, it's usually about 10 MB per minute of stereo wave...is this track about 9:30 minutes long?
 
The better the quality of the exported tracks the higher the filesize, you cant escape that. I would recommend doing things with the best quailty, then after its all mixed down and finished you can either delete the track files or archive them to a dvd and keep a copy that saves you having to export all the tracks again for a remixing.
But if you make any changes to the track in fl then obviously you would have to retrack out the parts that have been changed in fl. It would be a good idea that after a track is finished you archive all the relevant parts to the track, including sample source information to a dvd, this frees up the huge amount of diskspace that messing with wavs uses. I wouldnt recommend mastering mp3s as the quality of the sound isnt as good as wavs, you can use mp3s for somethings that arent dependant on being crystal clear, like scratches and vocal snippets from movies etc.
 

eldiablo

KRACK HEAD
ill o.g.
go get an external hard drive and dont worry about it

FIREdevil.gif
eldiablo
 
Also instead of tracking out all the individual drum elements to their own tracks, maybe export all the drum elements as a single wav file, that would save plenty of space. Do not convert a drum track to mono as often hihats are panned slightly left and other sounds can be placed anywhere in the stereo field. Its only really the kick and snare that are generally mono and dead centre in the stereo field. You can export them to mono if they are single drum elements tracks but if its a mixed drum track keep it in stereo after doing all the messing with the pans before you export that track. I hope that helps.
 

Ash Holmz

The Bed-Stuy Fly Guy
ill o.g.
Battle Points: 207
lower your sample rate ... try 24 bit/ 44.1khz .... with files sizes that big your probably doing 24/96 or 24/192 ... it doesnt make a real diifrence quality-wise although some audio nerds will tell you diffrent. 97 for one track mb is big .. after i consolidate most of my pro tools tools mixes I make are between 200 - 400mb and thats with vocals and evrything so i dont know what ur doing wrong. unless you make long ass songs .. try changing sample rate and see if that makes a diffrence. u should always track drums in mono if u can. for a number of reasons i wont get into right now.
 

djjumpinjoe

ILLIEN
ill o.g.
Battle Points: 33
Also u can try what i use to do ..... Just export the measures as wave ..... If the drums are 5 mins long or whatever but its a 2 or 4 measure loop just export 2 measure of snares 2 measures of kicks and so forth .... Then u can just spread each 2 measure wave across ur track in Protools or what ever ur using ... No reason to record whole 5 mins if it is made of 2 measures and is looping
 

Chrono

polyphonically beyond me
ill o.g.
Battle Points: 5
Try doing it in mono.

It'll cut it down in half.

But 97 MB is quite big for a wave file, it's usually about 10 MB per minute of stereo wave...is this track about 9:30 minutes long?

one option to reduce file size is opening your drums, hats, and short/nonmelodic sounds in Audition and converting them to mono. Leave your melodic samples in stereo and compare the file size to the original wav. g'luck

-c.t.
 

Shonsteez

Gurpologist
ill o.g.
Battle Points: 33
If Audition supports ReWire - I would just set your Audition session up for that and then just press record in Audition once all your track are set up. Thats what I used to do with Reason and Live. Worked perfectly and I didn't need to export each track or sound from reason first because I was already doing that essentially while recording directly into Live from reason. try it out if its supported by your software, its really easy.
 
ill o.g.
Battle Points: 1
Also instead of tracking out all the individual drum elements to their own tracks, maybe export all the drum elements as a single wav file, that would save plenty of space. Do not convert a drum track to mono as often hihats are panned slightly left and other sounds can be placed anywhere in the stereo field. Its only really the kick and snare that are generally mono and dead centre in the stereo field. You can export them to mono if they are single drum elements tracks but if its a mixed drum track keep it in stereo after doing all the messing with the pans before you export that track. I hope that helps.

good advice

i always use seperate wavs for each drum sound and then export my 4 bar beat to a wav file. if i need to change up my loop for a hook or whatever you can always go back to those original wavs and make a few change ups to export an extra wav file. then you'll only be working with 2 wav files.
 
Top