Freezing tracks - Creating Tracks
Today we explain what it means to freeze a track, how it works, when you want to do it and help clear up some common misconceptions along the way!
To freeze a track in your DAW simply means to render it in place, using a simple tool that keeps everything looking the same in your DAW while accessing an audio file in your project folder which was bounced when you clicked the freeze button. This is a great way to drastically cut down on CPU usage in your projects! And it can also help you keep from having to manually manage the removal of unwanted/un-used versions of your track along the way.
If you choose to freeze a channel in your project, you can easily un-freeze it again later to make adjustments to any of the plugins running on that channel or the arrangement itself. While frozen, however, you can not make edits to any of these things. That said, some DAWs do offer the ability to operate in different freeze modes, as shown in this video tutorial. Freezing tracks is a clever way to keep your project moving ahead while not having to get bogged down in finding other ways to make it more efficient, from a processing perspective.
You may find it necessary to freeze more than one track in a project to keep it under control. Often times, in very large projects, you will encounter freezing and crashing of the software itself. This is usually fixed by freezing the most CPU intensive channel strips, once you have finished dialing in all of the arrangement and plugins being used. You do not need to un-freeze channels before bouncing your project. But if you do, remember that once a track is no longer frozen the original CPU load is reinstated immediately.