Hey there folks,

I just have a quick question...

My band is mixing our record right now. Our guitar player/singer is doing it all in Adobe Audition, on his laptop, with some pretty nice mixing monitors, and has had some issues with low RAM (though he up'd it by a Gig and is STILL having issues). Some of the tracks on the album have upwards of 20 separate tracks and all twenty of those tracks have various effects, etc, so yeah, we understand the low RAM thing. To avoid weird stuttering playback due to the low ram, he has started mixing in groups, meaning first he mixes guitars, bass, drums, then he mixes that down to a WAV and then mixes cello, glockenspiel, accordion, and various other instruments with the original mixdown. My question is, will this have any noticable negative effect on the final mix?

Your responses are appreciated, and maybe at some point I can get some samples to let you all hear.

Thanks.

Gah! Don't mix in Audition if it can be helped. It should only be sold with a maximum of 6-8 tracks as it becomes damn near inoperable with more than that going.

So basically, you're going to have several mixdowns to mixdown into fewer mixdowns, which you are going to mix to create your stereo mix, correct?? Other than it being needlessly complicated compared to mixing in the analog realm, the only thing you'll have to worry about is bringing everything back in time; which shouldn't be too difficult if you remember to go from the beginning of each track regardless of silence when creating your sub-mixes. Good luck!

If all you're looking to do is save some processing horsepower, you might wanna try destructively applying effects on the individual tracks. If (for example) you're happy with the mix you have going and you know that plugin settings on some of the less key instruments (like backing vox or that harmonica part on the chorus or whatever) aren't going to change, then mix those tracks down as final effected tracks. Mute the originals, or replace them with the effected tracks. That way, you still have maximum control over levels of everything individually. Some plugs, like 'verb and EQ, can be CPU hogs. Settle on a sound and commit where you can and still save some flexibility for final mix...

I think they call that "stems" and mixers have been doing it for years. So ok if it works for you go for it. I don't do it personally.

Maybe try a different program...I'm sure something better than Audition can be pirated off the internet if you can't invest the cash into something better.

When I have to mix in Audition, and do the "sub-mixdowns, I always record the session as a separate version. therefore preserving the original session in case you want to go back and correct mistakes. I'll go with a folder like "Song Title 1.0" and save the session with sub-mixdowns in a new folder called "Song Title 2.0" and so on. Usually 3 versions is all that's ever needed. If at a later version you see that the sub-mixdowns need changes, you can always go back and correct mistakes.

Heck, I've seen much worser mixing programs that Audition.