do you mixdown groups during mixing?

[LSD-Studio]

hey there....title sais it.
i was wondering whether you mix down group (like drums or even music minus vox etc) during mixdown to save up cpu-usage?

 

[Soundlurker]

Yeah, I do, since my PC is prehistoric (duron @ 800, 512 ram uke: )
For my band's demo I had a seperate project for the drums, the guitars, the bass and the vox and the mix of the mixdowns of all those It may be saving CPU but it's certainly nerve wrecking, as you have to do a 1000 things just because one of the components needs some tweaking.

 

[CJWall]

i don't.. I tend to tweak farrr to much to mix anything down seperately. I do however, "freeze" tracks (Nuendo) quite often.. seems more convenient, at least for the way I tend to work.

Charlie

 

[LSD-Studio]

i don't.. I tend to tweak farrr to much to mix anything down seperately. I do however, "freeze" tracks (Nuendo) quite often.. seems more convenient, at least for the way I tend to work.

Charlie

i used to work like that, too.
but problem is, that i'm using alot of groups, and unfortunately you can't freeze those.

i'm currently working on a pentium4 dualcore 820 (2.8 GHz), that's just not able to handle my way of mixing sometimes

but i'm using like 15 different vocal-tracks all with separate fx going to 5 diff groups aigain with fx etc.... that eats cpu

 

[dreamcatcher]

I mix down drums, without kick and snare (or whatever the song says), into stereo. Pretty late into the mix I may mix down the top and bottom snare into one track, maybe.

I also mix down guitar tracks if they are more than doubled into a stereo track.

I mix down doubled (or tripled) bass into a single mono track.

But vocals, not at all.

 

[martyfireball]

i can't see much milage in that these days. My music PC is at least 2 years old and wasn't cutting edge when I built it and I can run 30+ tracks with plenty of plug ins going.

 

[JeffTD]

My Mac handles as many plugins as I can throw at it .

 

[Sweetnothing]

First post here hehe

I used to mix down groups, but later I found myself remixing those group mixes again and again, I'm never satisfied with my mixes anyway.
I did that when we recorded our demo in the rehearshal space, with cooledit and a 500mhz pc...it sounded like crap anyway haha ( all because of the overheads, guitars and everything else could pass)

 

[Suicide_As_Alibi]

I had one instance where I needed too - I bounced a version of the drums I liked and froze the individual tracks (but kept them in the project), and then worked on guitars and vocals. Once I'd done them, I bounced all of guitarist A's tracks, guitarist B's track and the vocals, and went back to mixing the drums, and so on... it took forever, but my system just couldn't handle it any other way. In the end I think it was one of my best mixes so far, but I'd NEVER work that way again by choice.

Steve

 

[Sinister Mephisto]

I do two sessions, vocals, and everything else. but I'm on Protools LE on a PC so It's kind of a compramise to deal with space and to stop my computer from commiting suicide.

 

[zolhof]

i don't.. I tend to tweak farrr to much to mix anything down seperately. I do however, "freeze" tracks (Nuendo) quite often.. seems more convenient, at least for the way I tend to work.

Charlie

+1
freezing tracks in cubase it's a must do here, otherwise my pc would blow

 

[Kazrog]

Even on my Dual 2.5 GHz G5 I still mix down groups during mixing. I like to have the processor headroom to add things as I go. The irony, I guess, is that a lot of my best plug-ins are on my UAD-1 card, which at this point creates more processor load issues than it solves. I wish they made native versions of these plugins, I know my CPU cores could handle the load much better than a several-years-old DSP card.

I guess I could always get another card.

That all being said, it is nice to commit to things. To say "OK, the bass and drums are perfect, let's freeze and move on." I don't mind it, it's become a part of my workflow.