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I have been reading quite a lot on this forum and others recently, but I'm still none the wiser about the various reasons you'd bounce a track/riff to audio. I have some ideas, which go as follows:

To resample basslines or other instruments, so that you can modulate them in real time and get that fucked up constantly modulating sound;
To save on CPU;

But why else? Why is it such a widespread practice? Obv I'm missing something here, but I dont' know what it is...

Pretty much what you've said TBH.

Also, personally speaking, when I do final mixdown etc I find it less distracting if everything is an audio clip. I've already committed to what something is going to sound like in terms of pattern/programming, so I can focus solely on the mixing process as opposed to constantly adjusting where my snare hits or whatever.

there are 1001 reasons
to be perfectly honest, i think my synth sounds .. sound better, after i cut 'em.
also i won't throw fx plugins on an instrument rack. I know i can, i just don't like the way it comes out.
i write it first, record it, then mix it

@wub, that's interesting - I would've thought that, while endless drum editing could definitely drive you mad, then sometimes you'd want to shift note positions, if only to add variety etc. Suppose it depends what kind of track you're doing - if thee's a constant-ish groove, then would make sense to bounce to audio pre-mixing.

@Today - I guess you have a better idea of what they'll eventually sound like too if everything's in audio clips. So you do the FX onto the audio rather than pre-audio? Interesting, not tried that ever.

me n wub are in the minority of folks who avoid endless tweaking by making a commitment to an audio file
of course i've gotten better at saving patches and MIDI clips lately. Theres always a point where you wish you could change something
But twisting parameters for an entire 3hr session is an easy trap for me to fall into, personally
And yeah i like knowing exactly what the file represents, rather than it being a series of triggers and calculations that theoretically should sound the same each time you play it back

One thing i always fuck up is tracking synths "wet" (with internal fx engaged, liek verb and delay)
cuase i'm loving a sound and don't wish to dry it up, track and re-mix it. But then, the inevitable happens -- i need to compress or distort the sound in order to get it to cut through, and i'm squashing the whole thing including the delay and verb output, fucking up the whole way the compression acts on the sound. it's compressing this big wet garbled mess of sound, rather than the clean synth output then --> verb/delay... not the right way

There's only so far you can push a sound while its still in its VSTi. Once you bounce it you have full manipulation control and you can start moving further out of the box. Building resonance is another good reason to bounce.

Its kind of like the growing cannabis lol. If you cut off the top of it, two new tops will grow. You cut it to make it stronger. Bounce the VSTi pattern, take it apart and rebuild it even better than before.

baboon2525 wrote:@wub, that's interesting - I would've thought that, while endless drum editing could definitely drive you mad, then sometimes you'd want to shift note positions, if only to add variety etc. Suppose it depends what kind of track you're doing - if thee's a constant-ish groove, then would make sense to bounce to audio pre-mixing.

You can still edit the drums if you want - a 4/8 bar drum audio clip is still drums...if I want to make any micro edits to the arrangement, I just get out the cutting too and get slicing. A lot of my tracks' glitch percussion effects come from me doing that, going at it with an 8bar perc loop, moving bits around, repeating, swapping over, reversing etc etc.

Today wrote: personally And yeah i like knowing exactly what the file represents, rather than it being a series of triggers and calculations that theoretically should sound the same each time you play it back

...deep stuff....

@today - isnt' it the usual way to have time-based effects after compression etc in an FX chain (or as sends rather than inserts, which I think is what your'e saying you forget to do if i'm reading you correctly)?

@fluid - building resonance? not sure i follow...

@wub that's very true; guess i find drag and drop more intuitive than cutting and slicing, though I should probably set up the controls in reaper to make t quicker for myself

thanks for the replies guys, it's amazingly quick on this forum (just joined)

yeah. thats what i forget to do, lol. cuz i like the patch, and don't wanna strip it of the smoke n' mirrors bits, before laying it down then re-mixing n that. its a fuckin pain in the ass

baboon2525 wrote:thanks for the replies guys, it's amazingly quick on this forum (just joined)

im just having a surprisingly light workday and drank a lotta coffee...

but its true it is usually pretty active, i like it here

I find it to be better editing for audio (at least in logic). However, I dont bounce absolutely everything to audio

definitely, doing cheeky edits has gotten me out of a lot of jams

commit and move on. life is too short to endlessly tweak things.

also if you're using any sort of hardware, especially synths that don't save presets, you've gotta bounce.

Really there are so many reasons, and no reason at all. Whatever works for you. I think a lot of people just find that taking things to audio adds another layer investment, decisions, etc. But to get crazy modulating synth lines, well a lot of times that is easier as a synth/midi than audio. Whatever man. Try it out, if it doesn't produce good results for you, skip it. Maybe come back to it in a couple of years. Maybe your opinion/preference will have changed?

Working on a track for me is like a progression towards audio, most times. The more I work, the more audio I build up, until ultimately, the midi and automation is left behind, somewhat like shedding a husk. I try to keep my midi parts that have been rendered below my audio tracks, so that I can go back and tweak if need be, or layer up additional sounds with the underlying midi data. Whatever works, brochamps.

For me:
1. Primarily because in logic your only allowed so many effects in the chain, also if I'm using loads of effects it overloads my mac.
2. You can cut the audio up and see what its doing by the waveform.
3. Bouncing means any filters I've applied won't get fucked up if I don't bounce (if you don't use autofilter you probs won't have this problem)
4. It means I can copy it to other tracks and use different effects to layer on other frequencies (this makes the sound wider, fills it out and adds harmonics+colour to the sound)

great answers, thanks. liking the husk simile, nowaysj...

find that bouncing things into audio, you can make some funky grooves chopping up the audio loop and then reordering,
and for basslines too, it seems like when you bounce a 1 shot single note bassline out into audio and you create a sequence using the audio file, you get a different feel to the groove, i do this alot, in this track below i made i use this technique on the bassline! it also saves CPU, and if you rather visually see the bassline and what its doing, you can use audio. people also bounce in to audio and make 2 audio copies, one which is the dry version, and then a processed wet version, and they are mixed together to get a balance of the sound you want. i beleive subscape does this.

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