Output bit rate

[Eric_J]

Hey everyone,

I am just finishing a project and will send the mix out to be mastered. I wanted to check with ya'll to see if I am doing it right.

My session is in 16bit 44.1k and the mastering lab said the following formats are ok, "send stereo interleaved tracks. Save them onto cd as 16, 24, or 32 bit files in the form of aiff or wav. "

Here is what I was going to do, but I heard RTD (record to disk) is better than bounce but I am not familiar with how to do that.

1. I mix all tracks to a new stereo track.

2. I bounce stereo track with dither set to 16bit.

Thanks for any advice.....

[RadioMoo]

I'd go with number 1, then use "Export Selected As" (Shift+Command+K) to export the file. Dither will automatically be applied.

[Craig F]

don't dither

let the mastering engineer do that

[Eric_J]

Cool! all that time wasted by bouncing! Good god....

How about the bit rate though? Any advantage to exporting in 24 bit if the session is recorded in 16 bit? I heard that internal processing of PT is 24 or 32 bit anyways?

Thanks

[Eric_J]

Let me add to that....why would you ever want to mess with bounce to disk when you can export in 1/10 of the time????

[jmark]

How about the bit rate though? Any advantage to exporting in 24 bit if the session is recorded in 16 bit?

Yes, unless your session consists of only one track with no volume changes or processing. With a typical multi-track session, the summing of all the files (even if they're all 16-bit) will create greater-than-16-bit dynamic range...which you want to preserve so the mastering engineer has the highest possible resolution to work with (also for your own use, if you later decide to release it in a higher-resolution format).

[accession]

I heard RTD (record to disk) is better than bounce

Aside from the shorter time-it-takes, why is it better?

[Eric_J]

Yes, unless your session consists of only one track with no volume changes or processing. With a typical multi-track session, the summing of all the files (even if they're all 16-bit) will create greater-than-16-bit dynamic range...which you want to preserve so the mastering engineer has the highest possible resolution to work with (also for your own use, if you later decide to release it in a higher-resolution format).

Won't the file already be summed when I mixed to a stereo track? Thanks

[RadioMoo]

Yes, unless your session consists of only one track with no volume changes or processing. With a typical multi-track session, the summing of all the files (even if they're all 16-bit) will create greater-than-16-bit dynamic range...which you want to preserve so the mastering engineer has the highest possible resolution to work with (also for your own use, if you later decide to release it in a higher-resolution format).

Won't the file already be summed when I mixed to a stereo track? Thanks

Yeah, and he said that. You're "summing" to stereo.

[RadioMoo]

don't dither

let the mastering engineer do that

If you export a 24 bit file, no dither is applied; it's only when you export at 16 that the dither is applied automatically during export, so you're cool there.

Yes, don't dither.