Render glitch workarounds
Posted: Tue Jun 17, 2014 1:52 pm
I ended up with a project that played nicely from Ableton. But when rendering it to a wav file, there were some vst instrument glitches. They appeared at exactly the same places each time.
I tried increasing buffer size to no avail.
I did not try freezing the tracks, which is said to, and makes sense that it would, work.
I did come up with two other workarounds:
1. I have Harrison Mixbus ($20 last month). So, I wired Ableton to send its Master to a single (stereo) channel in Mixbus via JackRouter, which is part of the MB package. Then, in Mixbus, I recorded Ableton's output (which does not have the glitches). Exporting from MB does therefore also not have the glitches. It also allows me to add MB's tape saturation and final compression if I choose. It also makes trimming the the output easier, since Ableton's render dialog wants things in measures, not time.
If you want to do mastering as a semi-separate process, this isn't a bad solution, even if you don't have glitches. Since both products can be open together, it allows some of each. If you need to remix a bit, you can do it, then go back to mastering and re-record quite seamlessly.
2. Force Ableton to render in real-time, not sped-up time (which appears to be the root of actual issue). I added a dummy track to my project. I added an external audio effect to it, and routed it to and from my audio interface. I then had to add some sound to it, so I just pulled from some other track. The result is that when rendering, Ableton does so in real time, and my wav file doesn't have any glitches.
Both workarounds require rendering in real time, which is obviously slower.
The advantage of #2 is that if all you have is Ableton, it will work.
I tried increasing buffer size to no avail.
I did not try freezing the tracks, which is said to, and makes sense that it would, work.
I did come up with two other workarounds:
1. I have Harrison Mixbus ($20 last month). So, I wired Ableton to send its Master to a single (stereo) channel in Mixbus via JackRouter, which is part of the MB package. Then, in Mixbus, I recorded Ableton's output (which does not have the glitches). Exporting from MB does therefore also not have the glitches. It also allows me to add MB's tape saturation and final compression if I choose. It also makes trimming the the output easier, since Ableton's render dialog wants things in measures, not time.
If you want to do mastering as a semi-separate process, this isn't a bad solution, even if you don't have glitches. Since both products can be open together, it allows some of each. If you need to remix a bit, you can do it, then go back to mastering and re-record quite seamlessly.
2. Force Ableton to render in real-time, not sped-up time (which appears to be the root of actual issue). I added a dummy track to my project. I added an external audio effect to it, and routed it to and from my audio interface. I then had to add some sound to it, so I just pulled from some other track. The result is that when rendering, Ableton does so in real time, and my wav file doesn't have any glitches.
Both workarounds require rendering in real time, which is obviously slower.
The advantage of #2 is that if all you have is Ableton, it will work.