How to export Cakewalk Project to other programs

R

RWhite

Well-known member
I have a problem. I posted this same basic question some time ago, but my associates do not believe the answer I came up with (i.e. sorry) so I'll try it again.

First some background: I am using Cakewalk Pro Audio 9 with a Gadjet Labs Wave 824 sound interface. My recording up this point is almost completely audio only, no MIDI. I am recording a basic rock band with about 8-16 tracks per song, recording 24 bit @ 44.1. I save songs as projects and when I make major changes I also save as a .BUN file and back those up to CDR.

My problem is that another musician in the band wants to get his hands on the tracks to do his own mix. He owns a Mac and uses Cubase rather than Cakewalk. He wants to get the individual audio tracks then slice them together in Cubase so he can do what he wants.

As many of you know Cakewalk saves the individual audio files of all projects (including muted and outtake tracks) in a folder using a cryptic naming formula that seems to make no logical sense. In my case where I have a dozen song projects on my hard drive this means I have maybe a hundred audio files with cryptic names. If I play the audio files individually it may take half an hour to find the right file, and even then I am not immediately sure whether I am playing take 1, take 2, etc.

The only way I have been able to pick files out for one song was to install Cakewalk on another machine and load on a bundle file. Since that was the only song on the drive it was then easy to find.

In cases where a song was all recorded at one time I can go by data file date & time, but our songs tend to get put together in bits over time so this solution rarely works.

My Cubase using friend tells me he has talked to professionals who tell him "yeah its easy - just export the song". I know how to export as a mixed down WAVE file but I need all of the raw audio tracks for a song. I have been unable to figure out a easy way to gather up these tracks.

Any solutions or ideas would be much appreciated - R.W.
 
you can probably export as many as 8 trks at a time depending on your cards capabilities.i had to do this to try out a wavelab demo's features.in console view assign your tracks to as many different outputs as you have available then export.the dialog box should show your cards many outputs.then burn all the files you just created.if you have tons of tracks this might be a bit tedious,but if you find a better way let me know.
 
yeah, I've tried that too...
I own a SBLive, so no 8 outputs for me.
I simply archived all the tracks I did't need, for instance; track 1 - drums; track 2 - bass, etc.
I archived all but track 1 and exported that as drums.wav.
Make strong coffee and repeat the procedure until your finished. This way your pal knows instantly what .wav is what. (ain't audio fun..?)
 
Question for all you guys... can a MAC read .wav files? I thought that was a PC format and MAC's used a different format for audio. Just food for thought while you're making the coffee.
 
Thanks for the tip, I will try it ASAP - probably Friday. When you do the export, can you name the tracks? Or is it obvious which tracks these new "exported" tracks are?

Although I am not 100% sure, I image most decent MAC programs would be able to read a .WAV because it is such a common file format in the world at large. Now whether they can read a 24 bit .WAV is another matter. The one time I tried it I think I converted the tracks back to 16 bit first.
 
I finally figured out what I was missing.

With my Gadget labs you have 8 ins and 8 outs. Cakewalk treats it as 8 mono ins and 4 stereo outs. So if you want to export up to 8 tracks at a time, you have to pan all tracks to 0 or 127.

Then:

Mixdown Audio / Export to files

under Format select "Mix to seperate left and right files" (what I missed earlier)

I did not convert files from 24 bit to 16 bit first, but Windows Media Player could play the resulting files which leads me to believe that Cakewalk does the 24>16 file conversion during the export.

If you (I) have more than 8 tracks, or more than 2 with a standard audio card, then I guess you just repeat with different sets of tracks.

Thanks for the responses!
 
Alternatively why not combine each track into a single file starting at the start point and mixdown each track to a single wave file. (Note: if you combine tracks in the audio editor it rewrites the file as one complete file)

Burn all the wave files onto a CDR and then your friend can open each wave file into cubase line them all up to zero and he's away.

my 2 cents worth.
cheers
john
 
Not quite sure I understand you John - I think what you are saying is that if you have a track that doesn't start at the begining combine it with another track that does, so every track starts at the beginning?

The way I am doing it now works fine as long as tracks all start at the begining. But if you have a track containing just a short guitar overdub (for example), you would have to figure out how to line it up. So in that case combineing it with another track would make sense.
 
I mean if you have a track made up of many short bits if you combine them in track view they will all combine BUT still be made up of small pieces so if you wish to open that track in say soundforge it will open as individual short pieces which is a pain. OTH if you combine all the short pieces in the audio editor it actually joins them all and rewrites a new complete file.

sooooo... if you make sure they all start at the same point using empty parts to fill the start, combine all the short bits with the empty bit you added, you will end up with full length tracks that all start at the same point and you can then mixdown individual tracks to their own wave track.

cheers
john
 
the CWAF tool found on your cake cd will locate all your audio trcks and associate them with the wrk files. Write down the names and drag and drop wherever you want. WAV files can be read on a mac but thats about it... it would be wise to convert to aiff? files on mac or so I've been told....
 
I had not looked at the CWAF tool... I will check it out.

Yeah my Mac using friend uses Cubase which will export but not import .WAV files (seems a little weird). So he used another program to convert them before importing them.
 
Not lonG AGO I had to export my files from cakewalk to pro tools and the way I did it was use the mixdown audio (export to file ) on each track while soloing them.

then open them up in vegas and save it to aiff

it was a tedious job but it was the only way I could find

hope it helps

hopefully these issues will be resolved with sonar.

wari
 
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