Bouncing tracks quality loss.
 

Ok I am new to pro tools and I have a question when u r done mixing everything how do u export? Bouncing tracks or another format, I recorded in 24 bit. 96 kHz and now when I bounced to 1 track stereo 16 bit 44.1 I lost highs and gained some bass any reason y?

Re: Bouncing tracks quality loss.
 

I prefer to record back into the session INSTEAD of bouncing out. This gives you the opportunity to tweak the mix even more as you go, if you want, and if you hear something you don't like you can stop, fix it, and punch back in, consolidating the file when you're done. When you're happy with it, then you EXPORT THE REGION as a new file at the sample rate and bit depth you prefer.

To do this requires some real thinking on your part, as you setup the mix-desk using BUSSES which are then routed to your record track, with the record track outputs feeding your monitors.

This gives you lots of options as well, such as putting the rhythm section on a stereo buss (with dynamics if you wish), putting the vocals on a stereo buss (dynamics, etc.), guitars on one and keys on one, etc., etc., etc. All of the buss outputs then feed a final stereo buss (with dynamics if you wish) which feeds your mixdown track.

We've been doing all of our 'bouncing' like this since early 2004 and it works MUCH better than the typical 'bounce' does.

Re: Bouncing tracks quality loss.
 

Bounced should not sound bad, there is something wrong!
Is your Master clipping? Is your sound device in sync? Is/was it in sync when you listened to your bounced audio?

How did you listen to your bounced track? iTunes or similar? Does your audition application have any EQs or Compression on (iTunes has something like this!)

Re: Bouncing tracks quality loss.
 

Are you using dither? Otherwise, what you are experiencing is truncation.

Re: Bouncing tracks quality loss.
 

Hmm... Dither? I'm not to sure a out what that means but I'm just bouncing it down and I listened to it on cool edit pro I moved the huge wav file to my pc to listen to it over there. And hey that mixing back in to the session sounds like a real good idea... It should enhance the mix alot more too since your focusing on groups mixes after the individual mixes that's a very good idea. Thanks guys well I'm gonna keep fiddling with it and see what comes out I don't know y it sounds like that, maybe it's cool edit.

Re: Bouncing tracks quality loss.
 

Oh everything thing was in sync, if it wasn't would that cause something like this to happen?

Re: Bouncing tracks quality loss.
 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dither

There are plenty of resources out there defining dither.

I would suggest learning about it if you are going to mix in a higher resolution than what you bounce down to.

Re: Bouncing tracks quality loss.
 

Ok I will thanks for the input. I really appreciate it.

Re: Bouncing tracks quality loss.
 

I have another question, if u lose alot of fedelity going down to 16 bit then what's the point in recording in pro tools hd at 24 bit 192 kHz? If in the end ur loosing alot of the sound quality that u want? Sorry guys I'm new.

Re: Bouncing tracks quality loss.
 

You don't really lose all that much fidelity in going from a higher samplerate to a lower one. In fact, most people wouldn't really be able to tell the difference between 192k and 96k, or even 44.1k for that matter. Not only that, but the disk space required for 192k wave files is borderline ridiculous.

Where you lose quality is in the bounce. Hence why dither is important. When you bounce from a higher bit depth/sample rate, there is data and detail being lost. Without dither, this lost detail becomes apparent, because you end up with aliasing and quantization error. Think of when you reduce a high quality image to a lower one. Without compensation, you end up with a grainy, pixelated looking image. Most photo-manipulation software will automatically compensate for this by applying dither. Dither is essentially "noise" that fills in the lost information and smooths out the image. The same goes for audio.

The next time you bounce a file from 96/24 to 44.1/16, put an instance of POWrdither on the master fader and see if there's a difference.

Re: Bouncing tracks quality loss.
 

Ok will do I'll try that and see what happens

Re: Bouncing tracks quality loss.
 

I'll add my two cents into this thread as well.

I had this same issue when bouncing 96K tracks to 44.1. The bottom end always ended up flammy etc. From all the research I did at the time it basically came down to the algorythms used by PT to bounce 96 to 44.1 are very complicated, difficult and fraught with danger. You'll find that if you record at 88.2 and bounce that to 44.1 the results are much better. This is because the calculations PT does is a lot more simple. I won't pretend to understand the detail of all of what I've written above, but you google this subject yourself and find the same results.

Bottom line.....for me, it is much easier to record at 44.1 (conserving disk space, my two profires can do a max 16 inputs, with 96k it was 12 etc), and the bouncing is easier for my machine. Plus...my machine doesn't set fire to my desk from working too hard during mixes with a few plugs.

I do however maintain the importance of recording at 24bit. This enables you to record with a lot more headroom. For example you don't need to adjust your preamps so you're just under clipping. You can allow a softer signal for say, a snare mic, which yields nuch better results. However using dither here is necessary. I won't explain what dither is here as the links provided earlier do the job better than I ever will.

I don't have the clients that require high definition recordings so I don't do it...simple. However, if the pros had that same outlook we wouldn't see these awesome recently recorded albums being remastered for vinyl.

Re: Bouncing tracks quality loss.
 

A laptop cooler helps a whole lot. Makes a big difference in how hard the fans in the macbook work, and how hot the machine gets in general. Also helps to preserve the life of the parts.

Re: Bouncing tracks quality loss.
 

barters, how are u using the profire with 16 inputs? firewire and then optical or what? i wanted to do that with my firepod but it doesnt have an optical in

Re: Bouncing tracks quality loss.
 

Awesome....I should have really done this a while ago, but was lazy etc. Good idea, and this'll give me the push I need to actually get one.

To answer Kemos questions.....

I have the two profires daisy chained together via optical cables. Two optical cables are used altogether. One which transmits data from the slave(2nd) profire to the first, and the second optical cable feeds clock information from the "parent" profire to the slave. From there a firewire 400->800 cable is fed into my macbook pro.

My external hard drive is connected via a firewire 800 cable to a PCi express card in the side of my laptop. The card cost me abou $25 from ebay and hasn't missed a trick.

Once it has all been setup, I have 16 channels available each with a preamp. Apparently you're able to use the rest of the prosfire options such as spdif etc to expand your track count some more, but the preamps are vital to what I do.