File Management

When working with digital audio, file management becomes an important part of your process.  If you ever have to exchange files with another studio there are some things you can do to make the process easier for the guy at the other end.  File management can also be construed as part of the process whereby you clean the “heads and tails” of the audio file for a mix or perform conversion operations to dither tracks to mp3 format.  In both cases, here are some tips to make the exchange of files and mixes easier.

You just finished tracking a project for a client and now they’ve informed you that they would like to send the project across the country to another studio for mixing.  Here are some things that’ll help before you send the project on its way.

Rather than get into the specifics of the actual transfer prep (we’ll save that for another time) I’m going to focus on a couple of simple things.  First, you may have your audio tracks all chopped up or starting at various times throughout the song (i.e. the guitar part that comes in only during the middle section).  If that’s the case, the first step should be to use your DAW to condense the tracks so that they all begin at the zero marker or at measure 1, beat 1.  In fact, it’s nice to include a slate count (4 clicks) on a new track to help with alignment.  Make sure you clean up all the clicks, pops and extraneous noise that may precede the actual performance on your tracks.  Engineers like that.  When tracks are aligned at zero it makes it easy to import them and ensure everything starts at the right place.  Your DAW should have a function to help accomplish this.  Next up, you should give each track and the associated audio file a unique and simple name.  If your DAW exports the tracks and names them automatically it’s still nice to rename the files to something less cryptic depending on how your DAWs naming conventions operate.  What we’re after is a folder with all the files for that particular song stored in it and each audio file named for what the track instrument was.  If I import the files from that folder and set them all to start at zero, that afore-mentioned middle guitar part should come in right on time and have a descriptive name.  This makes the job all the easier at the other end when you’re using different DAW software (or even a different version of the same DAW).

When dealing with mixdowns that will either go to the client or perhaps be taken for mastering I like to perform some cleanup on each stereo mix file.  If you open the file in an audio editor you should be able to zoom in on the waveform and cut out some of the dead space at the start of the song.  Don’t go overboard if you are sending the file for mastering.  The idea is to trim the start and perhaps some of the ending that’s unnecessary.  If you’re providing the file as a final mix to a client, I like to trim the beginning fully and leave a few milliseconds before the song starts.  I’ll also trim the end and give it a nice smooth fade as well.  These are little details but they go a long way.  Cleaning the start of the file avoids the dreaded 10 seconds of silence when the track is played (depending of course on how much dead space there actually is before the song starts).  When sending to a mastering house I leave more space at the start and end of the file and let them do the editing there as it leaves them more to work with. 

These are simple ideas but they can be very helpful in making things easy when moving files or projects around!