Cleaning Up After Recording

After a session of tracking audio, you will most likely have a lot of audio that was recorded but is no longer used. Remember when you punched in over your track? The audio you recorded over is still on your hard disk, eating up precious space. There are certain advantages to keeping this audio around. For example, if you need to, you can always go back to a previous recording by finding the file in the Audio window and adding it to your arrangement. However, when the recording is done and you're happy with the result, it's a good idea to clean the unused (and unwanted) recordings off your system to free up disk space for . . . well, more recordings! The steps in this exercise show you how to do this cleanup easily, without accidentally throwing out something you need.

1.	Open the Audio window (Cmd-9). You have many audio files and Regions in your list. Several of those files are not used in the song.
2.	From the Audio window's local menu bar, choose Edit > Select Unused. All of the audio files not used in the song are selected.
3.	From the Audio window's local menu bar, choose Audio File > Delete File(s). An Alert dialog pops open to tell you how many files will be deleted. Notice that the dialog warns that you can't undo this operation! The files will be removed from your song and also deleted from your hard disk. Pay attention, because after the next step, these files are goneforever!
4.	Click the Alert dialog's Delete button. The unused audio files are removed from the song and deleted from your hard disk. Now things should be nice and tidy, with only the audio files that are used in the song appearing in the Audio window.
5.	Close the Audio window. At this point you have a decision to make: Do you like the sounds you've recorded? If so, use the skills you've learned so far to arrange the recorded MIDI and Audio Regions so they fit into the song, or alternatively, delete them!