XT2 offers the ability to use background rendering either to bounce down to audio tracks, produce complete mixdowns of projects or simply to temporarily use rendered data to ease the CPU load of a current project.
Creating the Audio folder
Before using some of these options however, you must configure your project to enable background rendering as an option. XT2 will insist in some cases that the current project is saved and that an audio folder is configured for all rendered audio within the project.
After saving the project in the desired location, the next step is to set up the audio folder for the project. Selecting File->Setup and then selecting the "Project" tab will display the following screen.
The location field holds the location of the saved project file on your disk. To set up the audio folder, click on the "Create" button.
A default name will be populated in the pop-up dialog, but it can altered if required. When the name of the audio folder is entered, click on the OK button.
This will set up a sub-directory in the same folder as the project file with the name specified and all background rendering tasks will create files in this sub-directory.
If an attempt is made to render or freeze without the audio folder being created for the project, the following error message will be displayed.
Rendering
XT2 has two rendering options which are only really different in terms of the rendering target. One will render to an external file only and one will render to an external file within the configured audio folder and place the rendered output in a target sequencer as a new audio track/part.
The first option is the only background rendering function that does not actually require the saving of the project or the setting of the audio folder - it can be done at any time. The option can be found in File->Render to wav... and will bring up the render dialog when selected.
The following options are available within the render dialog:
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Samplerate - set the appropriate samplerate for the target file from a drop-down between 22050Hz - 192000Hz. -
Bitrate - set the appropriate bitrate for the target file from a drop-down. XT2 has the option of rendering to 16, 24 and 32 bit. -
Channels - set either stereo or mono for the target file from the drop-down list. -
Filename - set the path and name for the target file. Selecting the "..." icon will bring up a file dialog which will allow navigation to the appropriate file path and typing in the target file name. It is not necessary to type '.wav' as XT2 will handle this automatically. -
Render scope - a drop-down list lets the user select whether the the render should be the entire project or just within the loop selection as identified in the sequencer - an option indicated by the "Left-Right locator" option.
When the appropriate render options have been sent, the rendering task can be triggered by clicking the "Start" button. To the right of this button is a progress bar which will track the rendering until completion.
Once complete, a wave file matching the name selected should exist in the target directory. This render will render will create all items project-wide that are not somehow manually excluded from the process - eg. muted tracks, deactivated effects etc... It will take into consideration all active automation recorded and the rendering will be sample-accurate.
The second rendering option requires specification of a target sequencer (in XT2 it's possible to have multiple sequencers running concurrently), therefore the option exists in the "Sequence" menu of an option sequencer component. This option also requires an audio folder to be setup as described at the top of this tutorial.
Select Sequence->Render to new track... The render dialog will appear and it will be almost identical to the project render dialog - minus the setting of filename and path. The target file will be saved to the configured audio folder and the naming will be handled by XT2.
Aftering the rendering process is complete, a new wave file will be saved to the audio folder and a new audio track will be created with the rendered file as an audio part.
Freezing
At any given time the CPU consumed in the realtime rendering of plugin effects and instruments into audio can become too much for faultless playback. At such times, it is desirable to find a way to "offload" some of the more CPU intensive activities when playing the project. There are various ways of handling this, but XT2 offers a commonly available and very useful function that can be found in many sequencers - the freeze function.
This function is basically a background rendering - ie a file is created. However, instead of creating a new audio track and placing the resultant render in the track as an audio part, XT2 will simply "freeze" the current track and play back the rendered file in place of the current track.
To access the freeze option in a given track, either right-click the track header or select Track->Freeze from the top menu. Either way, as long as the audio folder is configured as described at the top of this tutorial, the freeze process will commence immediately.
A progress bar will track the rendering and a "Stop" button is available to halt the process. It is worthwhile to note that XT2 will render all in the path for that track right up until the audio output. This includes VSTi, insert and send fx, fader settings in all channels in the signal path including the Audio Output channel itself. There are no partial freeze options.
Once the freeze process is complete, the only evidence that it has been performed will be "frozen//" as a prefix to the given track name as in the screenshot below.
It is possible in this case to edit the midi track which has been frozen, but the changes will not be evident on playback as only the rendered file will be played back.
There is no "Unfreeze" option in XT2 per se. The freeze functionality acts like a toggle. If you select "Freeze" on a track that's already frozen, it will remove the reference to the rendered audio and remove the prefix in the track header. It also cleans up the project audio file by deleting the rendered .wav file created.
Note: The project used in the screenshot above is StarDust-TC.xt created for XT2 by Tim Conrardy. This project and more can be downloaded for free from the EnergyXT website.