Ableton Forum

So, it is possible, cause I do it all the time, I just resample to a new track. So when you try to freeze a track that is routed to or from another track, instead of just not doing it, how about you have an option like this.
A dialog opens up that states "The output of this track is dependent on another audio/midi tracks activity. Flatten as is to a new track?"
I'm sure you guys can word that better than I can.

Example. track one is a kick. track two is a bassline. track two has a compressor with sidechaining routed to track one. You want to freeze track two, it won't let you. I think most people who are doing sidechaining realize that if you later on change the output of track one (after track two is frozen) the old sidechain output will still be what you hear on track two.

Another work around I use for this is to temporarily move the compressor to a new track, then freeze, drag the frozen clips to the new track. you could have an option to do this automatically, or an option to "flatten to a new track without the device that is sidechain routed" voi la. Ableton users are smart, and use alot of sidechaining. hook it up.

edit: I just realized that with that second work-around I mentioned, The way I mix, I usually have sidechain compressor at the end of the effects chain, if it were in the middle you would get a different sound.

Yes this absolutely sucks. I hope future functionality enables better freezing features. For now what I do is create an audio track and set its input from the track I cannot freeze. I record the loop ad then minimize and mute the original track.

You can also put the sidechan n the audio track and freeze the original.

I remember talking about this more than 2 years ago

There are 2 answers from Ableton (Amaury) here:
http://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=106496

get yourself an I7 930 with 6gb ram and you'll never have to freeze again!! Thats what I did, and I cant get my processor usage above 50% no matter what I throw at it.

majicmonk wrote:get yourself an I7 930 with 6gb ram and you'll never have to freeze again!! Thats what I did, and I cant get my processor usage above 50% no matter what I throw at it.

That doesn't always solve the problem. Live will only use 2.5GB of ram at max. I've driven an i7 to the max with just a few plugins, namely East West Play, Omnisphere, and Altiverb. Until we see 64 bit, having lots of ram won't solve the problems.

majicmonk wrote:get yourself an I7 930 with 6gb ram and you'll never have to freeze again!! Thats what I did, and I cant get my processor usage above 50% no matter what I throw at it.

Try throwing 96k samplerate and 64sample latency at it

GilJ wrote:I remember talking about this more than 2 years ago

There are 2 answers from Ableton (Amaury) here:
http://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=106496

quote from amuary: "Let's think about it: in session view, you have a track sending dignal to the side-chain. Which clip from that track should be chosen while freezing the track holding the side-chain device?

We may need a compromise there (i.e. scene-per-scene), but I'm interested in hearing your opinion.

Regards,
Amaury"

Ok here's my compromise: how about arrange window only sidechain freezing?
I guess the session view thing is a bit sticky.
I've switched to strictly arrange view in my own beat-making so I forgot about that part. I guess it could just choose the clip thats in the same scene. who knows.

Live has the best Freeze function I've seen. It would be great to be able to freeze tracks with routing in or out of the channel, but there are a lot of issues that make it problematic. Logic has Bounce in Place, but it doesn't work very well when routing out of Ultrabeat, etc... Anyone else seen this work well in other software?

As someone else already mentioned, resampling is you best option. I wouldn't hold my breathe on this one, but maybe we'll be surprised in Live 9.

Just an option of "Track x has links to track y, in order to freeze track x you must freeze track y too, do you wish to do this?"
Or the option of freezing the plugins before the sidechained data, so synth, amp, eq and then stops at the compressor.