Bouncing Down To Audio For Mixing. Reason 5 / Ableton Live

[Dirt Krilth]

Hello all
Im a newcomer here and i was wondering if anyone could show some insight on my issue.
I had tried to search the forum for an answer but no luck.
I am using Reason 5 and Ableton live and i am in the process of EQing and compressing and matching levels etc. in my track to make it sound even and full and so on.
Ive read that people bounce down to audio to make easier to focus on mixing rather than changing knobs and settings, which i tend to always do.

My question is should i export each individual track from Reason? example: one export just contains the drum track, another export contains the lead etc. and then load them into Ableton as audio clips that way? Or should i rewire Reason with Ableton and then resample the individual tracks into Ableton?

And if it would be better to rewire (which i would rather not do) how do you resample without all the volume loss? Whenever i do the audio waveforms arent dynamic. Very flat.

[nowaysj]

Traditional way to do this, as far as I've seen, is send as many instruments as possible directly to reason outs that are rewired into your real daw. Bypass reason's mixers if you can. Then just record the rewired tracks in the real daw, and mix there.

[Dirt Krilth]

Thanks makes sense.
Your saying rewire straight through the hardware interface with the audio I/O when you flip the rack, instead of through a mixer and then the interface?
Is that why my volume is being reduced?

[nowaysj]

Yeah, I suppose. I don't understand any of the technicalities of what reason is doing to sound. I've heard for myself and seen it demonstrated that audio passed directly out of the reason outs into a rewire'd host daw sounds better, cleaner, clearer, more dynamic, less kind of dead.

[Today]

yes, rewire directly through the virtual i/o device. one bit of advice i'd offer is to finish all your writing and arranging in Reason, for the stuff you're using Reason sounds on. it's just such a ballache to go back and start clipping/editing audio because you had a different arrangement in mind. Also automation (filters and stuff) is so easy to write in Reason. makes working with loops a lot of fun, then tracking is straightforward, and mixing is a breeze.

[Dirt Krilth]

Thanks guys much appreciated. I shall give it a whirl when it comes time to export.

..and one last question, what should be the maximum output level for the entire mix?
Ive read nothing should peak over -6dB? or-10dB?

[nowaysj]

It is not just about where you end up peaking, but gain staging the whole way... but, yeah, those are good numbers.