For now the freeze function only freezes the plugins before a hardware insert. Especially when using hardware what you often want is to capture the hardware processing to get independent from the hardware unit and can use it on other tracks as well.
For now the only method aware to me to do this is to do a “reamping”, sending out the output of the track and record in on another.
Expanding the freeze function to realtime mode and using inserts makes track handling easier. you wouldn’t have to add a track and could organize everything within the source track and clicking “freeze” would be way more easy than to manage the “reamp to new track” workaround.
PS:
Oh, and a freeze function for Busses, so that you don’t have to “stem-export -> import” everything would be fancy as well.
To #1: I thought before i go to the tracker, i discuss the issue here. Maybe there is already a feature that i just didn’t know about. But i will track the feature request now as you suggested.
To #2: The situation i think about is, that i do a heavy amount of group processing. F.e. make a drumbus and put compressor, eq etc. there. Do a drumcrush-bus that has a ton of compression and saturation. Or a main-vocal bus that i send all my vocaltracks into and perform alle the vocaltreatment there.
Even if you spare the processing for each track you may get out of CPU power pretty soon if you stackup several plugins on the busses.
With bus freeze i could just freeze and inactivate the tracks that feed the bus. If i have to go back and change something, i just unfreeze and activate.
Just search for it to make sure it isn’t already there (Seems likely it is but I haven’t checked)
Well most modern computers shouldn’t have issues honestly there, but beyond that you still are running into what is a design incompatibility with busses. You need a track to have audio on disk, busses fundamentally don’t do this as designed in Ardour (They also get used for processing live audio for instance).
I understand what you are discussing, but a different way of approaching it that doesn’t violate one of the core designs in Ardour is needed. Honestly I am not convinced yet that writing out to track isn’t the best way to handle that, maybe what you are looking for is a way to automate that write and disable all input tracks and the bus, which could be done via Lua scripting I believe.