Mute Region or Mute Automation

[Jeremy Mix3000]

On a couple of PT sessions that I briefly worked on which were recorded by another engineer I noticed that the engineer Split then Muted Regions as opposed to just using Mute automation. It seemed like a bad choice to me because if you want to use an audiosuite plug-in on that track you would have to consolodate the track and thus loose your Mutes. Also you end up with alot of chopped up regions in a session which I've always been taught was bad because it requires more CPU power to play back more edits. And if you wanted to change one of these "mutes" it would take alot of work.

Is there some advantage to Splitting then Muting Regions as opposed to just using Mute automation ?

[Sound-Influence]

Depends on the situation I guess. As a general rule I prefer not to use mute automation because I want to keep the mute option available on playback. For instance, if a track has several auto mutes, but you want to mute the track to listen to the mix without it, each time it auto unmutes you have to mute it again. Easy enough to take it out of auto read, but then you don't have any volume changes on playback either. If the regions are muted instead then there is nothing to change - just mute or unmute at will on playback and you still have the other automation moves intact.

Once the mix is nearing completion, I generally duplicate the playlist, delete the muted regions and consolidate.

[Stig Eliassen]

I see your point.

A good way to solve this would be to suspend mute automation instead of using "Auto off".

[Mount Royal]

I like to mute regions because it provides a visual cue, at a glance, of regions that I've chose to dis-include for reasons of arrangement. When I settle on arrangement, I dupe the playlists and delete muted regions. Alternately after duping the playlist I consolidate the track so as to generate new audio.

Bear in mind that if you consolidate a track which contains muted regions, the muted regions consolidate as silence (ie, muted). But, if on the contrary, you are consolidating regions which are within a region group, the consolidation process ignores the region mutes (ie. they are unmuted). I don't know why they're ignored, but my very recent experience suggests that the region mutes are ignored during colsoidation when the regions are members of a region group. Perhaps I've invoked some pref without knowing it.

John Caldwell

[Extreme Mixing]

I don't write mute automation. Muting regions is the way to go on this.

Steve

[Jeremy Mix3000]

I don't write mute automation. Muting regions is the way to go on this.

Steve

Why do you prefer muting regions ?

[Jeremy Mix3000]

Anybody else with any thoughts on this ?

[misterloop]

keep also in mind you are giving your hard disk extra air to breath since a muted region is not being read from disk. i even would like to have the option to mute the whole track this way...

[Mount Royal]

...i even would like to have the option to mute the whole track this way...

Deactivate track?

John-

[Craig F]

I like to keep my Mutes out of automation so I can quickly mute a track if I'm looking for an offending sound w/o then needing to go back and remove the automation (fairly standard way of working in the post world)