1:15 hours to mix down a 3 min song?

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noobinberg

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Sonar 8 Producer Edition 32bit/64bit (for some reason some of my plugins don't work in the 64 bit version.)
Win7Ult 64bit/Linux Ubuntu StudioX64 10.04
Dell Dimension E510
Pent D 3 ghz
4gb DDR2 533mhz RAM
Basic 256mb video to support dual monitor
M-Audio Fast Track Ultra 8R Using ASIO Direct Drivers (Not using the on board sound drivers)

It recently started taking longer (at least 10X) to mix down audio and I cant figure out where the problem lies. I don't recall making any changes to my system.

Since this is my very first post it won't let me give you the link to my screen shot.

http:[REMOVE THIS]//i686.photobucket.com/albums/vv227/Oldenberg_2009/sonarscreenshot.jpg

4 tracks/4 vst effects/3:15 long...should this take over an hour to mix down on this system? Sonar 7 never took this long and it was on a MUCH slower system than my current one.

Could you give up some tips for speeding up the mix down process. Some people actually want to hear something by the weekend....:/
 
Sonar isn't trying to mix down the unused portion of your project is it. I had that happen to me when I was using protools 8 and had to highlight the part of the project that I wanted to mix down. I think the reason is, because some daw's hold on to all of the data that you removed from the mix until you get rid of it manually.
 
Do you mean when you are making the final mixed down version (in Reaper its called 'render')? If so, that's seriously fucked up!
 
m.g. eddie said:
I think the reason is, because some daw's hold on to all of the data that you removed from the mix until you get rid of it manually.
Click to expand...

How is this accomplished. I never deleted any unused data manually. I will check Google and see if there is a process for it.
 
i had this too and as you say . Hold shift + click on all of the parts to be exported (highlighted parts turn black) and your good to go. save as etc
 
kip4 said:
Hold shift + click on all of the parts to be exported (highlighted parts turn black) and your good to go.
Click to expand...

Nope. It still takes about 1 hr and 20 min to mix down. :(

I can't find anything about deleting unused data on Google either. Anyone who knows how this is accomplished, please let me know.

I think something is seriously F****D up in my settings.

http:[REMOVE]//soundcloud.com/labratz To hear some of my stuff.
 
I'm going to assuming you still have plenty of hard drive space left and that's not the culprit. :) Also, have you tried mixing down without the VST's?

Barring that:

Find your aud.ini file... Usually located here: C:\Documents and Settings\User Name\Application Data\Cakewalk\SONAR 8 Producer Edition

You can rename it to aud.old (or something other than .ini, Sonar will create a new one the next time it runs a test of your system) or you can open it in Notepad and delete everything listed beneath the line: PictureDir=C:\Cakewalk Projects\Picture Cache. (Make sure Sonar is closed). Save the file and restart SONAR.

Or you can manually delete files from your Picture Cache directory... Sonar will recreate any that are needed, so you are safe in trimming the size of the folder down.

Hope this helps :)
 
BentRabbit said:
Find your aud.ini file... Usually located here: C:\Documents and Settings\User Name\Application Data\Cakewalk\SONAR 8 Producer Edition

You can rename it to aud.old (or something other than .ini, Sonar will create a new one the next time it runs a test of your system
Click to expand...


Not much help...I muted the solo track to get out a mix without it. It's an hour and 15 min....ugh...I will try the next step in your reply and update if that works....O.o
 
noobinberg said:
Nope. It still takes about 1 hr and 20 min to mix down. :(

I can't find anything about deleting unused data on Google either. Anyone who knows how this is accomplished, please let me know.

I think something is seriously F****D up in my settings.

http:[REMOVE]//soundcloud.com/labratz To hear some of my stuff.
Click to expand...
Sorry, not going to photobucket. You don't need to delete any unused sections. But just to be sure, you're selecting the tracks and only the song's lenght in the time line?
 
Wow that's effed up - takes about 30 seconds to mix down any song I do with 25 tracks.....Sonar 6 PE.
Reinstall Sonar...
 
So, I scrapped Sonar 8 and upgraded to Sonar X1. It's been ripping the same tracks for 6 minutes now and is at 10%. There is no "Time Left" in X1 it seems. By my calculations it'll be 1 hour to rip a 3 min song...Now I suspect that windows settings are afoul. I will have a look at sound properties and report back.

UPDATE:

Took 1hour and 5min this time...better but still not practical yet. I looked to see what services were running and there were a few that shouldn't be running on this machine. Windows Search being one of them.
 
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Not sure if this will be helpful but I seem to remember when running Sonar (a long time ago) that if you exited out of the program, it would still show up as a process running in window. If you then re-launched the application, it was in effect running as multiple instantiations, which would screw up all kinds of stuff.

You might want to check to make sure that only on instance of Sonar is running
 
Figuring out where the problem is coming from.

OK...so, it's got something to do with my audio editing technique...I think. I ended up using one of the exports to create a completely new session and I exported a Reason session as a wav that I dropped into another track. Those 2 (stereo) tracks and only L1+ Ultramaximizer on the master took 10 min to export the session to 16 bit wave. The length of the song ended up going to 4:15 with intros and out-tros too. So long as I can keep my tracks clean and not too much slicing or major editing. (Unless I can find a way to clean up sliced up stuff.) But 10 minutes to export a 4 minute song is quite acceptable to me.

So, I'm confident it's the structure of how I'm slicing up the audio and copy/pasting. I tried to bounce the individual tracks to clips to clean up somehow but that process was like 1/2 hour per single track. I don't know how I can [efficiently] clean up the audio after I slice it and paste all over the place.

You guys have been great and I really appreciate all your input.
 
What are your settings in the export screen. I think that's where your problem lies. I use Sonar 8.53 and a 3 minute song, 25 tracks, tons of vst's renders in about 2 minutes.
 
Do a fresh test.

Create a new project, record a couple of tracks, and see what happens when you try to bounce that. Don't use any effects.
 
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