I see these phrases being thrown around a lot and I don’t know what they mean. What does it mean to “bounce” a track? What does it mean to “bounce” a track up or down?
I have no idea.
Comments
Islanddancer • 1 points • 2016-03-26
Bounce is a term that comes from Pro Tools (i.e. Bounce to Disk). If you go back to the very first incarnation of Pro Tools, it was basically a software version of a 4 track recorder.
When you were recording 4 tracks simultaneously but you needed a 5th track, you had to use bounce to disk. This would flatten 4 tracks of live audio into 1 track of recorded audio which is saved on tape or a hard disk.
That recorded audio track is retrieved from disk and fills the first track on the multi-track recorder freeing up 3 tracks for additional live recording (overdubbing).
Bounce therefore means to render multiple tracks to tape/disk and then play it back from tape/disk instead of the source so you can continue live recording over it. You can think of it as bouncing 3 live tracks from the tracker down to 1 recorded track on a hard drive and then back up from the hard drive to the tracker. Clear 3 tracks and then overdub additional tracks.
Nowadays, DAWs like FL Studio have 100+ tracks and are insane compared to the original Pro Tools. FL Studio and many other DAWs uses the term Render instead of Bounce. The reason for bouncing is different now since you don’t need to do it to free up channels on your multitrack recorder - you can’t really fill 100 tracks of live audio in a DAW without being wasteful.
Nowadays people will bounce to disk to free up CPU load. This way you can freeze (disable) a VST instrument and the VST effects on it. Your computer plays back the recorded audio from your hard disk instead of your cpu crunching all the effects and sound generation in real time.
Another reason people bounce is because they can manipulate recorded audio in different ways than a live sound generator. For example, you can load recorded audio into a sampler and do crazy loopbacks/chops/edits etc.
iamstephano • 1 points • 2016-03-25
What you do with a track once it’s complete or if you just want to render it to audio before mastering, etc.
[deleted] • 1 points • 2016-03-25
Also known as the ‘Export’ function in your DAW. Creates a track file (typically WAV) without changing the DAW session.
Ametrine08 • 4 points • 2016-03-25
I think I see the confusion you’re having, so I’ll try to explain it in a simple way.
You typically use MIDI to make sounds with your synths. MIDI is not audio, and it has no sound. The only thing it does is communicate with the synth to tell it what sounds to make. When you write midi notes in, you’re telling your synth when and how it should play those notes.
Bouncing means you render something to audio. (You essentially record what plays). If you wrote some midi notes in for a synth, you can render that all to an audio file, which in most cases is a lossless WAV. It literally becomes its own waveform and you can no longer change around the notes. (No longer MIDI).
There are multiple reasons for doing this.
- You can save a lot of CPU by bouncing down a lot of your sounds. Each MIDI note you use is taxing to the CPU, and its dependent on how CPU friendly your synths are.
- When you bounce to audio, you no longer deal with MIDI for that sound and your project gets lighter.
- You can bounce for further manipulation. There are some things that are hard to do when working with midi. Example; you can reverse the audio file, chop it up, etc.
- Sometimes people bounce an entire project to audio to continue working in another project. A lot of times, this is done to save CPU.
It’s particularly useful for mastering. If you have a track mastered by a label, they’ll ask you to bounce down to a 32-bit (or 24) wave and send it to them to master. Or you could do that to master your own stuff.
Hope that helps.
[deleted] • 1 points • 2016-03-26
That does make things much clearer. Thanks, there’s a lot of terminology that I’m not familiar with.
[deleted] • 1 points • 2016-03-25
When artists do this, do they still keep a full MIDI copy of the project somewhere so if they need to go back to make changes or export stems or do a remix or whatever, they still have all the original MIDI stuff there? Do labels have vaults of hard drives with backed up copies of their artists MIDI projects in a similar manner to how movie studios keep film negatives or in the case of modern movies, LTO Tapes or specialized long term storage hard drives for digital movies? As someone who is new to producing and is coming from the world of video editing. We have something similar called doing a Video Mixdown or Audio Mixdown when there’s too many video/audio tracks and video/audio clips in a project that bog the system down while actually doing the edit, however, doing so throws out the original clip metadata and just makes one video clip with no information and they are our worst nightmare when it comes to having to go back into a project to make changes for the Online Process (video editing world equivalent of Mastering). So the concept of bouncing down to audio freaks me out a little lol. How do people keep everything in tact or backed up when bouncing down to audio?
Koneke • 2 points • 2016-03-25
You just keep the midi around so you can go back to it later if you need to.
Ametrine08 • 2 points • 2016-03-25
When artists do this, do they still keep a full MIDI copy of the project somewhere so if they need to go back to make changes or export stems or do a remix or whatever, they still have all the original MIDI stuff there?
Bouncing to audio doesn’t convert anything to audio, it renders, meaning it creates an entirely new and separate file.
Example; If I wrote some chords for my synth and wanted to bounce that down, I would render that to an audio file. Nothing in the project has changed except I now have a new WAV file I can use. All the original midi is still there, and I can just hide it or something until I need it again.
For mastering, it’s similar. You can bounce the entire song down to a WAV file. Nothing about the original project is different, there’s just a new WAV created. So if you need to make changes, you can just go back to the project and re-render it again when you’re done. It’s essentially the same exact thing you do when you export a final version of your track.
[deleted] • 1 points • 2016-03-25
Oh ok! That definitely makes sense. Thank you!
triplewub • 5 points • 2016-03-25
Convert to audio.
[deleted] • 2 points • 2016-03-25
I see but from what? Is it just another term for rendering? And what does it mean to “bounce” to something?
triplewub • 3 points • 2016-03-25
Is it just another term for rendering?
Yep.
And what does it mean to “bounce” to something?
’ So today I bounced out the vocals for mastering ’ = ’ So today I just rendered the vocal stems for mastering’.
Basically rendering audio.
[deleted] • 1 points • 2016-03-25
I’m still not quite sure I understand. Aren’t vocals or melodies or whatever usually mastered in the daw using an inbuilt mixer? What would be the purpose of rendering an unmixed file to later take it back to the daw and master it?
I realize that particular example is just an example but I’m still confused.
JustLookingThanksBro • 3 points • 2016-03-25
You could either be sending it to someone else or to save on CPU power
WaterfordState • 2 points • 2016-03-25
Some people also just do it for workflow. In dubsteb you may use the same bass synth but have a large number of instances with different LFO, cutoff, etc. So instead of having 10 clones of the same synth, you just record, bounce to audio, tweak, record, bounce to audio, tweak, etc. etc.
Also, if you bounce to audio there is some manipulation that becomes easier. You can chop up the audio file to make it very staccato (could also just automate volume) or you can reverse the audio file. This allows you to create a reverse reverb effect which can be interesting leading into a vocal or chord progression.
With all that said, I rarely bounce to audio.
christ_from_tacobell • 2 points • 2016-03-25
MIDI, or audio if you’re automating or using effects.