Exporting

Press the orange Export button (lower right), or ⌘E, choose your settings, press Export…, and name the file. FastTracker mixes the whole project exactly as it sounds, including faders, volume and pan lines, effects, and their tails. A progress bar shows the mixing, and Cancel stops it without leaving a partial file behind. (In Single Track Mode, effects in the Effects Deck are heard while you play but are not in the saved or exported audio unless you used Apply.) Your choices are remembered for next time. (File ▸ Save As… works a little differently in each mode; see below.)

Save As: Audio File or FastTracker Project

How you save depends on the mode:

• Multitrack Mode. ⌘S saves the project (a Save panel asks for a name the first time). File ▸ Save As… (⇧⌘S) opens a window with one question at the top, Save as: Audio file | FastTracker project, starting on FastTracker project, which writes the whole project to a new project file. The Export button and ⌘E open the plain Export window, without that question.
• Single Track Mode. The Export button and ⌘E open the Export window with the same question at the top, Save as: Audio file | FastTracker project. ⌘S saves quietly over the file in place, in its own format; with no file yet it asks only for a name (the format was chosen in the New document settings when the document was made). ⇧⌘S opens one panel, Save Audio File As, with the name and, beside it, a Format menu: WAV, AIFF, FLAC, AAC, Apple Lossless, MP3 or FastTracker project. Bit depth, sample rate and Range are not in that panel; they are in the Export window. The panel opens in the saved file’s folder, or, for a new file, the folder of your last export.

In the window with the question at the top:

• Audio file is everything described on this page: the format, bit depth, sample rate and mono or stereo, and, in Multitrack Mode, the range of the project. The big button reads Export…. Before anything is written, FastTracker checks the mix for clipping.
• FastTracker project saves the whole thing (tracks, script, markers and proofreading flags) as a .fast project you can open again and keep working on. The button reads Save Project…. From the Single Track Mode window, the window’s audio first goes onto Track 1 of a new project.

The Export window opens on Audio file; the Multitrack Mode ⇧⌘S window opens on FastTracker project. Change it with one click.

Keeping the Script and Flags with Your Audio

An audio file has no place to keep a script or Follow-Along’s proofreading flags, so FastTracker keeps them in a small companion file. If your recording has a script or flags and you save or export audio, a question asks “Save this file’s script and any error checking flags associated with it?” Its buttons are Yes, No and Cancel, and a Don’t ask again box.

Choosing Yes writes a file beside the audio with the same name and the extension .ftdata: “Show 12.mp3” gets “Show 12.ftdata”, and a WAV and an MP3 of the same recording share one. Keep the two together. Next time you open that audio file in Single Track Mode, FastTracker loads its script and flags again by itself (the status bar says Loaded this file’s script and flags.). If a .ftdata file is already beside the audio, ⌘S refreshes it without asking. The .ftdata file also remembers the file’s Effects Deck, which comes back switched off. Multitrack exports work the same way.

You can settle the question once in FastTracker ▸ Settings ▸ General, under Script and flags beside exported audio: Ask each time, Always save them or Never save them.

And ⌘S?

In Multitrack Mode, ⌘S saves the project. In the Single Track Mode window it quietly saves over the audio file it came from, in that file’s own format. If the window has no file yet, it opens this window instead.

Just Part of the Project

With a selection marked, the Export window has a Range choice: Marked Selection (the default) or Whole Project. Marked Selection exports exactly what you marked, on the one track or on every track the selection covers, with a very short fade at each edge so it doesn’t click, and effect tails ringing out past the end. In the Single Track Mode window there is only the one file, so mark a selection first if you want to save just that part.

The Settings

When the Mix Is Too Loud

When you click Export, FastTracker first checks how the mix will come out, right then. If the quick check finds nothing wrong, the Save window opens at once. If the mix would be louder than full scale (so loud it would distort in the file), the Export window says so before anything is written: “The overall volume is going to be too high to avoid distortion. Should I adjust the master volume to a safe level before exporting?”

Adjust Master and Export lowers the master fader by just enough to put the loudest peak at −0.1 dB (−1 dB for AAC and MP3), then exports. You will see the master fader move, and the window tells you how far. Export As Is leaves the master alone and writes the file anyway. Cancel takes you back to the export settings.

A WAV in 32-bit float cannot distort, so it is not checked at all. It keeps everything intact, so you can lower it later.

MP3, LibriVox and Audible

Choose MP3 as the format and pick a bit rate. FastTracker writes a constant-bit-rate file at 44.1 or 48 kHz, in mono or stereo. If your project runs at some other rate, the MP3 is made at 44.1 kHz.

Two presets set it all up in one click: LibriVox (128 kbps, 44.1 kHz, mono) and ACX / Audible (192 kbps, 44.1 kHz, mono). Pair the LibriVox preset with the LibriVox recipe in the Cookbook, which sets your voice to the loudness LibriVox asks for.