Pro Tools track bounce question

[yammer107]

Hello

i was just wondering if any of you max up your sample rate when track bouncing.... I tend to leave low (256) which is the rate I record at to keep latency at a min. Am I leaving some audio quality on the table by doing it this way?

Thanks

~ Chris

[Len911]

if you are recording an mp3 instead of a wav or aiff, I think you're not getting as much audio quality to the table in the first place.

I wouldn't make an mp3 until I made one from the final wav.

I think the highest sample rate I've ever seen from a wav is maybe 192hz.

[andygabrys]

hey Chris,

I suspect you mean the process buffer size - 256 samples.

there is absolutely no advantage to have it set higher 512, 1024, or 2048 unless you are experiencing CPU overloads which are stopping your bounce. In my experience, if I don't hear clicks or pops during playback, those artifacts will not show up in the bounce. On the other hand, if you hear clicks and pops, it means the CPU isn't quite keeping up, and I would set set the process buffer higher until those artifacts disappeared.

Since you are a protools guy, a thing a lot of people do is actually bounce within the session - like you route all your audio tracks to another stereo audio track and record it into the session. There are many workflows which make this easy and seamless. You have the advantage of saving your mastering plugins until after you have recorded the mix into the session, and running another pass just for the master, again recording into the session. When you do the master bounce / record, you can inactivate all the tracks that are in the mix itself, saving masssive CPU.

Then when you have the master recorded into the session, you can export at a number of sample rates and bit depths or compressed to mp3 in any format, and not have to bounce every time. Its a worksaver for me.

HTH.

[yammer107]

Thanks Len and Andy!

I was actually just referring to bouncing tracks within my session.... Such as a drum track so I can then disable a labor intensive plug in. The term bounce used to only mean this process back in the day.... But now also means a whole session in the world of daw.... My mistake.


When bouncing down an entire session (master) I always use 2048. When bouncing a track within a session I use 256....... I was questioning if I should be using a higher rate. If the buffer doesn't affect the session audio output quality at all and I guess you're right Andy

[eeoo]

Yes as low as you can go in that case as the higher rate could induce latency.

eo

[yammer107]

.
Thats kinda been my thoughts all along Eo thanks.... somethin made me wana double check today.

Thanks everyone thread closed far as Im concerned

~ Chris