User guide

Chapter 9 Working With Tracks 209
When to Freeze a Track
In real-world situations, Freeze allows you to:
 Use additional effect plug-ins or software instruments in further audio or instrument
tracks, which would normally be impossible as it would exceed the CPU processing
limits of your computer.
 Play back projects created on computers with greater CPU power.
Freeze is designed to circumvent very CPU-intensive processes, which are generally
outlined as follows (from highest to lowest demand):
 Software instruments with a complex voice architecture
 Plug-ins with a complex structure (reverbs, filter banks, or FFT-based effects)
 Software instruments with a simple voice architecture
 Software sampler with active filter
 Software sampler with inactivate filter
 Plug-ins with a simple structure
If your computer is able to calculate all active processes in real time, it’s unnecessary to
freeze tracks.
Freeze is recommended whenever your system processing power runs short and one,
or multiple, existing tracks with CPU-intensive software instrument or effect plug-ins
are in a finalized state, or at least seem to require no further changes for the
meantime—in other words, a close to final mix.
As long as a track is frozen, its CPU usage is reduced to that of a high resolution audio
playback track, without any effect plug-ins inserted—regardless of the number, or
processing demands, of the plug-ins that were originally used on the track.