What's your average trackc ount?

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dfusion

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When you lay down your mix to audio, what's your typical number of tracks in your mix?
 
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Sorry, I meant number of tracks. Well, track time is good too.
 
For Productions usually no more than 12. For a complete song no more than 32....(only because that is what I'm limited to in pro tools le)
 
I do mostly hip-hop so I very rarely go over 20 unless I'm doing somthing with complex vocals or harmonies for the hook, or if I have a lot of fill-ins and stuff like that
 
yea, I produce hiphop as well.. so its normally, the hook, a few verses, ad libs, the beat and maybe some other little intros... prob around just 10. never over 20 or so.
 
Well i'm a bit wasteful so by the time i get to mixing down the average song i generally run anything from 40-60 tracks. That's not so excessive as it sounds coz each seperate drum sample or sound for example has its own track.

Some of the tracks are stereo but mainly in mono at 48kHz & 24 bit. For mixing purposes usually everything is grouped into about 6-8 buses though i.e. drums, bass, lead synth, vocals, guitars, solos, pads & strings, special effects etc.

One track i did called Spin Out was 68 tracks... mainly coz i had lots of different guitar stuff going on.

:)

MM
 
(Midi Tracks)
Bass => Instrumental
Melody => Instrumental
Melody 2 => Instrumental
Melody 3 => Instrumental
Kick => Instrumental
Snare => Instrumental
Hats => Instrumental
Precussion => Instrumental

(Audio Tracks)
Vocals 1 => Vocals
Vocals 2 => Vocals
Vocal Overs => Voice Overs
Ad Lib => Vocals
Chorus 1 => Vocals
Chorus 2 => Vocals
Chorus Overs => Voice Overs

(Busses || Groups)
Instrumental => Record
Vocals =>Acapella
Voice Overs = Acapella
Voice Extra Acapella
Acapella => Record
Record => Analysis
Analysis => Stero Output

This is how I have my setup. It allows you to control everything down to details and also allows you to control things as a whole. Everthing eventually gets routed to the Analysis Group (Cubase) or Bus (Sonar) which I do some spectral analysis and frequency tests on.

22 Tracks/Busses minimum.

Jos
 
yeah i do something similar in sonar but i mainly do audio and any synth i do i record as audio. here's mine:

Routed to "Vocals" Bus -
Vocal 1
Vocal 2
Vocal 3

Routed to "Guitar #" Bus -
Guitar #-1
Guitar #-2
(replace # with the number of the guitar, i usually use 3)

Routed to "Bass" Bus -
Bass 1
Bass 2

Routed to "Drums" Bus -
Drums - Kick
Drums - Snare
Drums - Tom 1
Drums - Tom 2
Drums - Tom 3
Drums - Tom 4
Drums - Tom 5
Drums - Overhead 1
Drums - Overhead 2
Drums - Ambient
Drums - Hi-Hat

Routed to "Synth" Bus -
Synth 1
Synth 2

All of the buses are routed to Sonar's Master and the Master is Routed to my Stereo out.

so thats 24 tracks on average, although ive used anywhere from 2 (used fl studio for a beat then recorded guitar or something) up to around 35 or so.
 
My songs ("ambient DnB") usually have around 35-40 tracks with about 50 effects total (VST plugins in Logic). If I have more tracks my cpu is reaching at its limits and I need to bounce tracks, which I try to avoid coz I can't change them later.
 
I am meticulous about sound quality. I track every single sound or instrument seperately. Sometimes I will fatten up a synth sound by copying it to another track and detuning it a little. I also copy my hats to another track seperate them and offset the times to create movement. The littlest thing can make the biggest sonic difference. After all of that, I probably never get below 22 tracks. I always bounce to record vocals anyway.
 
Most of my projects tend to come in between 12 and 20 tracks, as a rule, after comping, and sometimes with some bouncing. I'm overdue building a new desktop, so if I get much over 20 tracks on my 500 mHz Pentium 3, I start losing the ability to use all the plug-ins I want. (44.1 / 24 bit)

My new Centrino laptop seems to promise considerably more horsepower, but I haven't given it and its companion MOTU 828 that many hard workouts, yet. It was fat and happy dropping in 10 new tracks at a time, though.

Interestingly, comparing ACID Pro 3 with a friend's new Garage Band, I was able to add 20 stereo tracks to a 12 loop project -- on the P3! 16 bit and no plug-ins, though...


PS... Yeah, messyman, s'up with that 48 kHz stuff? You doing work for video?
 
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