A question regarding importing wav tracks

[derdup]

Hello music fans,

My home-studio projects usually contain multiple MIDI tracks for the instrument parts, plus a few tracks of audio for the vocals. I have a question about the process which makes my tracks ‘importable’ by another platform.

I understand how to make a MIDI track into an audio clip, and I know how to export audio tracks as wav files,….but I can’t get my head around the following scenario:

When I record my tracks as wav files ready for export, I'll need each track to be in sync with the others, i.e. they will each have the start time of zero minutes, zero seconds, right?

Suppose I have a track which contains only four bars of flute, but the flute doesn’t appear for a full two minutes into the piece. Won’t this mean that my flute track has two minutes of silence (before we hear the flute) which makes the wav file about eight times larger than it needs to be?

Is the guy who imports my tracks expected to have to chop out all the ‘empty’ audio once my tracks are on his system?

I get the feeling I’m missing something here. Any help will be much appreciated.

My software = Sonar Home Studio 4 (Win XP).

 

[TetraFish]

I don't think you're missing anything. Unless he's using the same DAW, then you could just send the entire project.

 

[ocnor]

Is the guy who imports my tracks expected to have to chop out all the ‘empty’ audio once my tracks are on his system?

If you write down the exact offset time for each track then it should be pretty simple for him to align them correctly.

 

[Tobe]

Send 2 minutes of silence on the flute. A splice can be lined up, but perhaps not where you want it.

 

[miroslav]

Won’t this mean that my flute track has two minutes of silence (before we hear the flute) which makes the wav file about eight times larger than it needs to be?

Yes...if you start that track's recording from zero...but you can always position the record "head" (vertical cursor line) to start at just a few bars before the actual point you will play, and then just hit stop when you are done with it.

That said...if you then export the WAV files to another system...you won't have the luxury of the "zero" point to line them all up...but, I would think you should be able to just line up the short flute part by ear.

Personally...I track all parts (long or short) always from the zero point and I just live with the whole WAV files.
I mean...it's just hard drive space, nothing more.

 

[gecko zzed]

Personally...I track all parts (long or short) always from the zero point and I just live with the whole WAV files.
I mean...it's just hard drive space, nothing more.

nah . . . it's more than hard drive space. It's also sitting there getting bored waiting for the little bit to arrive. I track short bits from as close as possible to where they come in so I don't sit around daydreaming. But . . . each to his (or her) own.

 

[Tobe]

Sure Gecko, for tracking... but exporting?

 

[miroslav]

nah . . . it's more than hard drive space. It's also sitting there getting bored waiting for the little bit to arrive. I track short bits from as close as possible to where they come in so I don't sit around daydreaming. But . . . each to his (or her) own.

Naaa…...those waiting moments are perfect for taking a sip of coffee...a quick scratch...or whatever helps get you through the session!
But there are also some music related reasons for me to track from the zero point.

Sometimes when you just "punch in" for 4 bars somewhere in the middle of a song...you can't always get the right feel as you do when you wait for the song to build to that point.

Also, most songs usually have repetitive parts/sections...so like, the 8 bars when I'm going to play my lead, have the same structure as the 8 bars of all the verses, therefore I won't just wait to play the lead when the "lead section" comes up, I'll instead mute the vocal track and play/record lead across the entire length of a song...and you know, there are many times where I will use something I played in a "non lead section" of the song...and then I just comp it in.
It beats punching in 5 takes of just the 8 bar lead section…IMO.

Taking all the above together...I rarely find myself just standing there for 3 minutes waiting to play a short part.

But there's no right/wrong way...we all go with what works for us in a given situation.

 

[Washburn100]

On the colaborating forums, we send a "sync tone" at the beginning of every track. This is usually a sterile tone or click that has a very defined waveform.

You put this at the beginning of every track at the exact beginning. This way when each track is imported into another DAW (doesn't matter which one) you can line up the audio tracks. Once done, you can trim the silence recording out of each track, but the parts are perfectly lined up.

You do end up sending a bunch of big files with little sound on them such as your flute example, but hey, this is 2010 and we have braodband! LOL

 

[gecko zzed]

Sure Gecko, for tracking... but exporting?

I am working in collaboration with another guy on a recording project. We both use Reaper. So I just save the whole project folder onto a USB stick and take it to his place (or vice versa).

 

[derdup]

Thanks for all the responses.

My collaboration project is a hypothetical one at the moment, but assuming the worst case scenario where both collaborators use different DAW’s, I decided to try out Ocnors’ suggestion:

Sonar allows me to split an audio clip at any point I specify. For example, I can split my flute track at exactly 00:01:55:00, and then delete all the ‘silence’ leading up to that point.

If my collaborator then sets the flute track start-time (Sonar calls it ‘Now-time’) to the same (00:01:55:00) when he imports my wav. file, the flutes should then play back properly in sync with the other imported clips.

Of course, there will still sometimes be long periods of silence during the middle of a clip. Oh well, no system is perfect