Mix to stereo track, then bounce? Or bounce entire session?

[storm-01]

I was once told that I should mix my session down to a stereo track and then bounce that stereo track. Is this really neccessary? Can I just put a compressor or whatever on my master fader to control the whole mix and then just bounce the whole session? I usually bounce the whole session with the master fader, but I wasn't sure if there was an advantage to the other way?
Thanks,
Stormy

[soundsurfr]

Originally posted by storm-01:
I was once told that I should mix my session down to a stereo track and then bounce that stereo track. Is this really neccessary? Can I just put a compressor or whatever on my master fader to control the whole mix and then just bounce the whole session? I usually bounce the whole session with the master fader, but I wasn't sure if there was an advantage to the other way?
Thanks,
Stormy

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">I can think of no advantages to mixing first. (I can think of a few disadvantages, tho, not the least of which is the fact that it takes away from your track count and CPU headroom.) I always bounce directly from the session. Mastering effects, such as compression, limiting and EQ can be inserted into the master fader.

[La Flange]

There's no major reason not to master in the mix, but there's not much reason not to do it separately either. I tend to be in a different mindset for mastering than mixing, so I always do it separately. It's important to mix to an external digital recorder (bounce to disk glitch) and a good idea to get some tube saturation during mastering, all of which can be done during mixdown. Then again you could also cook on a propane stove while riding a bike, but that doesn't mean that you should.