alternative method without using Reaper's consolidate menu:
First, I make sure to have a marker at the project start (normally, I'm leaving 10 seconds as project pre-roll). I'm triggering a custom action after having selected all audio items across all tracks which
- glues all items including their fades, ignoring time selection
- includes the necessary amount of silence to all items which do not already start at my project's start marker (to make them all start at the same point)
- glues the items again
So, basically, the procedure is:
- create a single item from multiple possible items on every track
- add the necessary amount of silence to the item's start to make them all start at the same time
I'd then rename all items to get rid of the multiple "glued" suffixes. Track fx are not included, however, item fx do get included if they are not bypassed. I'm very rarely using those, though.
For tracks holding MIDI items, I'm using "Render tracks to stereo stems (and mute originals)" prior to triggering my aforementioned custom action. Track fx in addition to the VSTi plugin itself will get included but I would bypass those if necessary.
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