Ableton Forum

One of the nice features of 9.1.6 is *supposedly* that you can render out individually selected tracks, rather than having to choose between all or just one.

This is great when preparing for mastering or a fresh mixdown of rendered audio.

Except that it does not work. I can't render selected audio tracks if some of them are also return tracks.

The feature works by the user selecting the desired tracks before going to file--> export audio video

But live only allows me to select EITHER return tracks OR ordinary tracks. Not both.

I either have to render ALL of them... or I have to render them in two seperate renders.... And at the moment I am working with a generative set, with randomly generated notes, so there will be a mismatch if I take that workaround.

Any advice? Am I doing something wrong?

thanks!

If I've understood this correctly you want one of your channels and the return sends to be exported together? If so you need to solo that channel and export with "Master" selected in the Render from drop down. But you'll obviously have to do each channel one at a time.

If you have randomly generated sounds you could always freeze the track and bounce it to audio so it doesn't alter.......

Thanks. Freezing is the obvious workaround. But it is an unsatisfactory situation. The reason people asked for this feature is that you need it when exporting stems for mastering: you want to bus or group your tracks and export those, plus return effects. But the way they have implemented it makes that impossible.

Create a bunch of new "recording" audio tracks - one for each Stem that you want to print - and route the desired elements to each "Stem recording track". Then roll record on all of these Stem record tracks in realtime. That would theoretically work IF your computer can handle it.

What's ya track-count like?

P.S. Generative stuff... thats the bitch innit? I always make sure I record any generative/random stuff as early on as possible - set it in stone - so that I'm dealing with something consistent as I move forward. Drives ya mad otherwise..

Can your randomly generated MIDI notes be recorded, i.e. set in stone, at some point before you go to print your stems?

Good advice.

It's only a few tracks. At the moment I am grouping them into the stems, rendering everything, deleting what I don't need, and then importing the rest.

You are right that it is a good idea to freeze the MIDI early on.

What I tend to do now is to record the generated MIDI track.

Then I can cheat and edit it

re:dream wrote:Then I can cheat and edit it

thats not cheating, thats... err... topiary!

Can you set your return tracks to send to a dummy track? Then add the dummy track to your selection?

I tried this recently when I wanted my return track to follow the same automation as a bunch of grouped tracks. I was adjusting volume over time, but the return track was remaining at a constant volume level, ruining the effect I was trying to create.

The solution was to add an empty dummy track to the group, and then route the send to return to the empty track. The empty track then causes the return to follow the automation of the group. Since this empty track would be a "normal" track, you should be able to select it with the others you want to export.

Hope that helps.

I will try that. Thank you!

That seems to work. My ears tell me the return tracks sound the same when bused through the audio track. I think. So that is a good work around. Thanks!

Glad to hear that worked out!