[zv yoda]

Hi Alan – Don’t be afraid to ask questions… that’s what the forum is for (although the manual helps too!). I’m fairly new to PT too (been self taught for just over a year now). I was in the same boat as you about this problem until a few months back.

Let's say you want to record you Boom track to audio (this goes for any virtual instrument plug-in)

1. Set up a stereo instr track
2. Insert boom
3. Program Boom however you want (… rather than go into detail here, you really should check out the Digi videos for Boom. In about 10 mins of video, Phil shows you everything you need to know about programming Boom).
4. When you're happy with it (your Boom track will have a sequence of midi notes based on how you programmed your drum track), then you'll want to record (or "print") that Boom midi file to audio
5. Set up a stereo audio track. You're going to record Boom to this track.
6. On your Boom track, send it to an available buss (say Buss 3-4)
7. On your stereo audio track, set up Buss 3-4 as your input
8. Record enable your audio track
9. Press play... you should now see Boom start to record across to the audio track
10. When this is done you can hide/dele/deactivate you original Boom track (to save on track count & CPU power)

I've only begun to realise how impoortant it is to print to audio as soon as you're happy with you plug-in/VI track... unless you do that, you're over stressing the CPU (because you're running multiple VIs at the same time). I also it found it forces me to make decisions soomer in the process... when you keep all of your options open, decisions keep getting put off (for me anyway!).

Also, you can do this with a number of tracks at once. Typically, I might have a couple of instances of Boom & 2 or 3 other VIs to make up my percussion/rhythm tracks. Once I'm happy with the overall percussion mix, I print them to individual audio files. Just repeat the above steps for each set of tracks. You can "print" them all at once.

Pretty soon, I'm planning to dispense with the individul audio tracks for percussion & just bounce the 4 or 5 tracks to one audio file. Again, it forces me to get off the fence soooer & will hopefully help speed up my workflow. I can always go back & tweak of something doesn't sound right in the final mix.