alexe Posted February 19 Share Posted February 19 (edited) I'm looking for a way to store finished projects in a way that is least dependent on specific versions of third-party plugins being present on my system. Everybody probably has experienced the typical scenario where you're trying to open a 5-year old project and some of the plugins or the particular versions of them used are no longer available or functional on your system, maybe because you upgraded your system in the meantime and those plugins are no longer compatible with your system. I want to be able to still open and play back a project in such a case with everything sounding as it is supposed to. The best way I can think of doing this is by simply freezing all tracks. Is this a good idea or are there any downsides to this? Instead of freezing, I could bounce all tracks in place, deactivate all of their effects, and even export all the aux tracks. But freezing seems nice because I can always easily unfreeze a track if this particular track's plugins ARE all still functional. An open question would also be: If I unfreeze a track that has a plugin on it that no longer works/exists, can I refreeze it (by Logic just re-using the previous frozen audio file) or is that not possible? If freezing is not a good idea, what are best practices for conserving projects for the long term? Edited February 19 by alexe Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wonshu Posted February 19 Share Posted February 19 I think Bounce in place would be your best option to keep all tracks sounding exactly the way they did when you left the project but still keep all the source material next to it. However, that still leaves the issue of the send FX... You can of course select "Export all tracks" - but I have had mixed success with that function, so I abandoned it immediately. If you want to be absolutely one hundred percent sure, then you need to solo + bounce each track. This can be done with a macro (Keyboard Maestro) so in theory you don't even have to watch the machine doing it... however, experience teaches us, that stuff always goes wrong when we step away from a machine... 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
des99 Posted February 19 Share Posted February 19 5 minutes ago, wonshu said: However, that still leaves the issue of the send FX... Sure, but then freezing doesn't help with that anyway 🙂 Commit/Render/Bounce to audio anything you want permanent that relies on third-party plugins, then you're *always* covered. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Solution David Nahmani Posted February 19 Solution Share Posted February 19 I agree that the best, age old, foolproof way to reliably backup and future-proof your projects is to export or bounce all tracks as audio files, all starting at bar 1 beat 1. It's also still, to this day, how most professionals exchange projects between DAWs with the least amount of headaches. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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