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Hi, Thanks for reading!

I'm trying to figure out a smart way to do the following:
-Basically, I want to use DP to send audio out to four different amplifiers while I play a guitar and sing over it. My hope is that I can have all the songs, all properly mixed into four different speakers, play one song after another (some right into the following song).


Here's what I'm doing:
-I've created five different audio tracks for each of the four amplifier outputs. So each speaker can receive up to five different musical parts.
-This works fine with the first song. But the trouble comes in when i put another song after it. In order to get the tracks to sound similar enough to each other, in both eq and volume, it is going to require alot of automation and tweaking. Plus, if each of the five audio tracks per output will have different parts playing in different songs, I cant really label the track with a useful name.

So What do you think:
-Since DP offers unlimited track counts, I'm considering just making an audio track for every different part in every different song, and just routing each track to which ever of the four amplifiers I wish it to go to. But, I feel like there must be a smarter way to do this. Is this a job for Chunks or Sequences? (i've never really had a need to understand them completely).

I'm pretty sure that someone who knows their way around DP better than I do uses or can think of a more sensible way to accomplish this. I feel like if I was building a deck or something this way, my father would tell me I'm doing it the "moron way."

Thanks alot for your help, it's nice to ask a question that deals more with expertise than troubleshooting.

I think you will definitely want to learn about using chunks and songs (Chapters 48 and 49 in the manual). That would probably be an easier way to accomplish your objective.

Before I begin, let me clarify one thing. CHUNKS are songs, sequences, or partial songs or partial sequences. When you work in a song which you can see in the Tracks Overview window, you're working in a Chunk, which has been play-enabled in the Chunks window. To move to another song (sequence) in the same file, you simply play-enable another Chunk. DP has a feature called "Songs" which are also accessed in the Chunks Window. I'm not talking about those anywhere in this post when I say "Songs." By "Song," I just mean a song you've recorded in a Chunk. Is that making any sense? Also visible in the Chunks Window are V-Racks, which hold virtual instruments and/or Aux tracks holding Plugins which are available for use in every Chunk. Since all Virtual Instruments in an entire file (all Chunks) are active at one time, this saves a lot of processor power. Now... on with my response.

If I'm reading you correctly, what you're asking for is the ability to use exactly the same mix setup, with the same plugins, but with automation tailored to the music of each song. Ideally you would like to be able to tweak a plugin one time, and the tweak then applies to all your songs, so you don't have to go into each song and apply the same tweak.

You can use V-Racks for your virtual instruments, so that the exact same V-Rack setup is available to each sequence for you to use without having to set it up again each time. It's possible to use V-Racks for plugins as well. When I mix, I have my tracks output to stems (aka: submasters, aka: aux tracks). These aux tracks hold the majority of plugins I use on the entire mix. If I'm doing a number of songs that all need to be mixed the same way, I have on occasion used multiple chunks (sequences) that all share the same stems via a V-Rack. Thus, my plugins are in the V-Rack, and they output back to the Chunk, sometimes to other Auxes whose faders can then be automated for more or less of that stem.

It's not ideal, because I have no way of automating the plugins themselves, so any plugin that needs automation will have to appear in the sequence. But those plugins that can be set and forgotten go to the V-Racks. Then all of my mixes share the same set of stems, making it faster and easier to set them all up. Any tweak done to the plugins in the V-Racks, thus applies to all Chunks.

I tried this for a while with a file that had about 30 songs in it, all pretty much finished, bounced to 2-track, and only needing "mastering." It worked pretty well for this situation, but for mixing a new song or series of songs, I have grown to prefer keeping my plugins and auxes in the mix itself.

Instead of stems in V-Racks, it is possible to use the same mix (Auxes, routing, plugins and their settings) for every song in the file (every Chunk in the Chunks window). If you prefer to save the mix itself and reuse it in the following songs, it's possible to save the first mix and drag all the tracks to the Clippings window after it has been mixed. Yet another way to save it for reusing later is to select all and drag the whole song to the Chunks window to create a new sequence with the exact same mix as the old, and then erase the content of the tracks and start anew with the sequencing and recording, still using the same tracks/plugins/settings/automation as the previous song.

By the way, I recommend that you create a "Mix" in the Mixing Board by saving it (bottom-left of the Mixer window). You can create multiple mixes per Chunk, each saved in the mixing board. In recent versions of DP, saving a mix will save the plugins and their settings, all automation, and all channel strip settings (fader positions, pan, etc.) whereas in older versions the channel strip settings did not get saved.

Well, I hesitated to write all this, as it sounds pretty abstract and complicated unless you're actually sitting there doing it. Plus, a lot of people already know how to do this, so I may be wasting your time if you already understand all this. I was not completely clear on your question, and you didn't come back and elaborate, so I decided to wing it with what I thought you were asking. I hope it helped.

Shooshie

Shooshie, Thanks alot for your super-in-depth response. That seems like a waaaaaaaaaaaay more intelligent way of doing things. It allows me to mix different songs the way they need to be, and label each track appropriately, saving lotsa time. I understand that chunks can be played seemlessly back to back to one an other. I haven't tried this yet, but im hoping it does so without any gap or drop in audio.
Ultimately I plan to have some of the songs go in to each other (for example: the kick drum keeps on pumping from the end of one song and the next song starts, on beat, using that same kick drum). Hopefully with this method that will be possible.
Again thanks alot. This will really help me out.
Nairb

Project Nairb 1 wrote:Shooshie, Thanks alot for your super-in-depth response. That seems like a waaaaaaaaaaaay more intelligent way of doing things. It allows me to mix different songs the way they need to be, and label each track appropriately, saving lotsa time. I understand that chunks can be played seemlessly back to back to one an other. I haven't tried this yet, but im hoping it does so without any gap or drop in audio.
Ultimately I plan to have some of the songs go in to each other (for example: the kick drum keeps on pumping from the end of one song and the next song starts, on beat, using that same kick drum). Hopefully with this method that will be possible.
Again thanks alot. This will really help me out.
Nairb

Chunks cannot be played back to back with zero pause. There is a small pause. If you want seamless, you have to go with the Song Window. There, you can line up chunks horizontally, and/or stack them vertically, and use the Lego Building Block approach to build a "Song." Once you've got it, you select those chunks (in the Song Window) whose conductor tracks you want to use, and choose from the Mini-Menu, "Copy Conductor Tracks." Then you select them all and turn it back into a Sequence, if you desire. Or, you can use the Song Window and just keep re-arranging the chunks as you want to. I heard someone say he was having crashes in the Song window. I haven't, but it would pay to save your work.

Shooshie