Old 10-07-2020, 06:00 AM   #1
RESROCKS
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Hi all

I'm just at the stage of mastering my 1st track in Reaper.

This might be a daft question, but after it's been rendered can i delete the project tracks or turn off all the effects etc.

If everything is left on will this have an impact on CPU when recording another track?

Silly question possibly but it's been bugging me!

Thanks for any help.

Les
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Old 10-07-2020, 07:09 AM   #2
Coachz
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I'm doing mastering at the moment and what I do is freeze every single track and set my buffer to 1024. It lets Reaper run as easily as Notepad. I master on the master bus with all 100 of my tracks feeding into it. If I need to tweak something I just unfreeze that track, tweak it and freeze it back which takes a couple seconds and makes Reaper run lightning fast and smooth. Mastering a stereo track is painful in my opinion because it's like trying to unmix paint after it's been mixed. If I have all the tracks available it's easy to make changes
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Old 10-07-2020, 09:44 AM   #3
Stella645
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A more typical workflow would be.

Complete mix
Render out to a stereo file
Save this project as final mix in case you want to revisit at any time
Master the stereo file in a new project.
Save that as final master project in case you want to revisit at any time.

If you have a reason to want5 to carry on within the same project but you rendered a stereo file back into the arrangement already you could save it under a different name then delete things in the project without affecting the final mix project.

Certainly nothing wrong with Coachz method also, though I would probably still be sure to save under a new name before freezing everything to be on the safe side.
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Old 10-07-2020, 10:21 AM   #4
serr
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This ^^^

Save the different iterations of the project for your convenience to recall as needed.

Not asked but I'll render stereo and/or 5.1 mixes and pull them into a media player to listen to with my "mastering hat" on and take notes. Something about not having the controls in front of you enforces a different kind of listening sometimes. A crutch for lack of discipline if nothing else. Then go back to the mixes if there's anything further to refine or alterations prompted by listening through as an album. I'll do quick reasonable volume alterations in a mastering session like you do. That's about it.

I mix with a 1024 block size. I don't have any live performance going on through the Reaper mixer at that stage. If I have madness on the board with some heavy latent plugins and wild subgroup routing putting PDC on blast, I'll render stems to track to if more recording is needed.
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Old 10-08-2020, 01:51 PM   #5
jpanderson80
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Do mastering for others, granted...
If I do a mastering project where I've done any work to the tracks themselves (mixing, touchups, stem work, etc.) then I like to use a fresh project for the mastering work and load in the track as a subproject.

One thing that may help your workflow is considering mastering the finished tracks all together at once. Your comment about mastering, then more tracking made me think this. Perhaps I read that wrong.
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Old 10-09-2020, 02:30 AM   #6
RESROCKS
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Thanks all
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Old 10-19-2020, 04:49 PM   #7
Peterk312
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Quote:
Originally Posted by RESROCKS View Post

This might be a daft question, but after it's been rendered can i delete the project tracks or turn off all the effects etc.
That would be the equivalent of destroying your multi-track work. Why on earth would you want to do this?
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Old 12-29-2020, 09:41 AM   #8
gvdv
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Stella645 View Post
A more typical workflow would be.

Complete mix
Render out to a stereo file
Save this project as final mix in case you want to revisit at any time
Master the stereo file in a new project...
This was my understanding of a 'typical' workflow for mixing and mastering.

However, in another thread I created recently (here, I think), I was told that one could achieve a fully mastered result at the end of the mixing process, before rendering the file, rather than mastering the stereo file, post-mix/rendering.
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Old 12-29-2020, 10:16 AM   #9
Stella645
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Quote:
Originally Posted by gvdv View Post
This was my understanding of a 'typical' workflow for mixing and mastering.

However, in another thread I created recently (here, I think), I was told that one could achieve a fully mastered result at the end of the mixing process, before rendering the file, rather than mastering the stereo file, post-mix/rendering.
Of course you can do that if processing power isn't a bottleneck which it can be with some modern mastering processors.
I was pointing out a more typical workflow than what the OP was suggesting....not that it's the one and only way to do it.
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