will i lose stuff?

  • Thread starter Thread starter maryslittlesecret
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maryslittlesecret

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Hey, gang. I'm pretty sure I know the answer to this, but I wanted to check before I do it...

I'm running desparately low on hard drive space, with a large chunk of it in Cakewalk audio files (you know the ones with no real name hiding in your Audio folder...) If I save my completed projects as bundle files and burn them to a CD, can I erase all those individual .wav files that are taking up so much space?

I want to be sure I can work on the song again (loading it from CD) in case I wanted to do a different mix, etc., so I don't want to end up erasing any valuable or necessary files...

Someone let me know if I can do this or need to start looking elsewhere for extra hard drive space. Thanks!

J
http://www.mp3.com/30SoS/
 
Mary,

You won't loose stuff. However if you're still a little paranoid as to loosing your work and your songs aren't too big, you might even save the songs twice as .bun independently and burn them (at low speed) to CD-r. Just a precaution.
Still I think you might want to invest in a bigger HD all the same.

greet...
Tab
 
....I should add to that, that if you use any plug-ins undestructively, you'll have to install those again for the song to sound the same (should you format your drive). Plug-ins not applied are not included in the .bun. You probably knew that, right?

Tab;)
 
maryslittlesecret,
Totally unrelated question. I've been on the West coast for about 4 years and am moving back there for a while. Does your band still play out much? I heard good things about you when I was back there, but never heard ya'. Hope to get to.

Dan
 
Thanks, Tab. I'm assuming you're saying burn the songs twice as an extra precaution, not because I necessarily need two copies... I use a couple of plug-ins in the mix, but they're easliy added back in, so that's no problem.

And actually I have over 9 gigs in just those little .wav clips (so you can see how much space they're hogging). I'm still thinking about adding another big drive, but I'd like to postpone that if possible. Thanks for you help.

Anyone else have any other safety precautions for keeping my tunes intact before I wipe out these files...?

J
http://www.mp3.com/30SoS/
 
for danelectron

Hey, Dan. You must have posted just before my last response to Tab. Anyway, I'm a little stunned (and thrilled) to think that after four years anyone remembers hearing good things about us... I'm assuming you're talking about the band Mary's Little Secret, right? ;-)>

Regardless, we haven't played out in quite a while. However, a couple of us are trying to get things going again with a new project call 'thirty seconds of shame' and hope to be playing out in the next few months. It will be a lot of the same material, plus new matyerial in the same style, but with a more contemporary sound/production. You can hear us at the link below...

Drop me an email if you'd like to be added to our mailing list to find out about upcoming gigs, new songs, etc. (don't worry, we only email about once a month...) Thanks a lot for your interest -- you made my day!

J
http://www.mp3.com/30SoS/
 
There are also a couple of compression programs that are lossless (if you save in 16 or 24 bit format--but not 32 bit floating). One of these that I have used some, with no change in the wav is monkey's audio

http://www.monkeysaudio.com/

There was a discussion about it on another forum and if saving 16 or 24 bit, it is a lossless compression that save %25 to 55 of the space of a wav file.... plus it is quick.
 
the way i look at it, as long as you have a hard drive large enough for you to work comfortably , the only reason to upgrade is for better performance, not more storage area. i say this assuming that you have a cd burner...when i've done enough work on something to know that i don't want to lose the material, i burn a cd of the project file with all audio, (in cakewalk a bun file) along with a few other projects i've worked on lately...i date each cd and put it on a spindle over the last one i burned....that way i pretty much have multiple copies of everything on cd, except for the latest version of the last project, which is on cd and on the hard drive......i believe in being able to reformat or replace your harddrive(s) at anytime...

hope this is relevant :)
 
j and all,

Since you're on the topic, I wanted to ask a question regarding burning cakewalk files...

I just recently got a CD recorder (Memorex CD-ReWritable Drive) and Cakewalk ProAudio9. I'm trying to burn a Cakewalk file onto CD and am not sure how to do it. Does it matter which Cakewalk file format it's in? (.wrk or .bun etc)? At this point, I've only been able to figure out how to burn .wav files, not .wrk or .bun files. Can you provide me with any information that may steer me in the right direction?

Thanks,

- Sydney
 
i'd burn a bun file, that way you have all your audio there...this is going to be larger than a wrk file, but this doesn't matter much if you're burning a cd....what software do you use to burn cds? in mine i save the stuff as data files....as opposed to digital audio...basically you burn a bun file to cd the same way you would any computer file or document. hope this helps :)
 
j,

Thanks for the quick response. I'm using software called "NTI CD-Maker" that came with the CD Recorder.

So you mentioned that I can save a .bun file as a data file? I didn't even think about that. I'll give it try. Thanks for the info.

-Sydney
 
Hi j,

I tried burning the file in .bun format like you suggested and it worked, but I'm still having a problem. The .bun file consisted of 3 tracks, each different .wav files. When I listened to the CD, the 3 wav files did not play at the same time, but one after another separately. Does this have something to do with the way I burned it, or the way I have it set up in Cakewalk?

Thanks again,

- Sydney
 
Sydney,

I think you're confusing .bun files with .wav files.
Bun files are for archiving purposes only. Say you have this neat song, containing audio and midi and all, and you want to back this up, so you'll have it available incase you're HD crashes or you have to do a complete reformat. In this case, like J said, always save your cakewalk project (.wrk) as a .bun file. You'll have to burn it to CD as data, since you can't playback a .bun file, not in a "real" cd-player, nor in Winamp or so.
If you were to copy the .bun file back from CD to HD, all you would have to do is doubleclick it, and Cakewalk should open it with all the wave and midi data in it's original place and time in the project.
In short: Backup -> save as .bun -> burn as data, not audio.

Good luck, Tab...
 
Tab,

Thanks for the info. I'm still a little confused, but have learned a great deal from this post; now I know how to archive.

But what I really want to do is record the AUDIO of my cakewalk project so I can listen to it on a CD player. I'm still not sure how to do this. Let me know if you get a chance.

Thanks,

- Sydney
 
hey Sydney,

NTI CD maker gives you option of choosing what type of cd you wanna make when you open the program, typically data cd, digital audio cd, cd rewritable, etc....if you are burning a cd to back up something on a hard drive, or to transfer to another pc, you choose data cd...if you want to put some music on cd you choose digital audio....now many cd players can play mp3 'data' files and even wav. files...one night my friend played back some drum samples in his car cd player just for the hell of it.

the main thing is to save a bun file so that you have your mix in cakewalk in an easily transferable file format...this is a data file that contains everything in your project.....once you have done this you might want to save the mix in a way that allows you to play it on any type of cd player...to do this, you open the project with it sounding the way you want, then click on FILE, then EXPORT AUDIO...this should give you a window with options for saving your file...the default setup probably has you ready to save 16 bit stereo mix...once you save the file ...it is a stereo wav. file that you can listen to in windows media player or encode to mp3 for internet distribution, or you can create a digital audio cd in NTI and burn this wav file...this will give you a version you can play in any cd player.

later gator
 
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