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protools bounce

PostPosted: Thu May 12, 2005 11:27 pm
by timo
amature here...
im recording an ep at the moment
recording in 24 44.1
digi 002 protools LE
when i bounce my mix down stereo 16 44.1 SD2 then burn off a cd
i loose majority of my sound :(
ok so i know the number crunching in my computer is not doing me any good
when the time comes to bounce my final mix down for mastering. I hope i wont kill my sounds too much or will I.
stereo 24 44.1 SD2 file, not burning it to cd but leaving it on my external audio drive taking that to the mastering engineer.

Whats a better option
bus all my tracks to one stereo track in my session and recording it and then exporting the file ?
or recording out onto cd recorder ?
any other options

PostPosted: Fri May 13, 2005 12:33 am
by davemc
No matter what people say about Pro tools..
When you say majority of your sound..
Do you mean the mx sounds different or missing stuff?
Are you bouncing correctly.
When converting to 16bit file.
What settings are you selecting for conversion. tweakhead or ?
Not sure with LE.
But when you bounce in PT it asks you what pair to bounce with.
Like L-R?
Are you using the right Buss?
Also have you added a master fader with dither?

Hope that helps?

PostPosted: Fri May 13, 2005 11:01 am
by Chris H
If something eg a lead , is different on your CD playback system than your PT monitoring then the problem may be something out of phase.

PostPosted: Fri May 13, 2005 11:02 am
by Greg
Are you using any external processors? I'm not sure that they work during a bounce in LE. Certainly, if everything is in the box, it should sound identical. I haven't ever used LE, but with TDM, bouncing to disk, is very simple and painless.

PostPosted: Fri May 13, 2005 11:08 am
by Adam Dempsey
Response below from Bob Katz on the international mastering webboard suggesting why to avoid SD2 files as interchange mixdown format. For cross platform compatibility windows .wav files (or bwf) is really the guaranteed interchange format.
Ad.


(Monday, June 07, 2004 12:29 PM)

"The sample rate and wordlength information in an
SD2 is contained in its resource fork, which can
be read only on a mac, and as you say, you have
to guess at the sample rate and wordlength to get
them to play back in wavelab.

This is a real problem and SD2 files should be
outlawed. Actually, Digidesign has declared them
obsolete. The ONLY reliable way I know to
determine the sample rate and wordlength of an
SD2 file is to check it out on a Mac BEFORE it has
been transferred to and from a PC. There may be
a utility that works with Macopener or similar
function on the PC, but I don't know about it.

I mastered an entire album at the wrong pitch, because I had no
frame of reference. But the client will know it
immediately, as the difference is not subtle when
you know what pitch it's supposed to be."

PostPosted: Fri May 13, 2005 12:06 pm
by Kris
That rant about SD2 files is such rubbish. The only difference between an SD2 file and an AIFF file is that the identifying code that recognises it as an SD2 is at the end of the file whereas AIFF is at the beginning. AIFF was made by AVID to counter Sound Designer. That's why digi say it's "obsolete". It's like Microsoft saying Mac OSX is obsolete. It's got nothing to do with its usefulness, just that other competing software uses it.

If Bob Katz had done his job correctly on the job in question he would have contacted the client and asked all the necessary questions to determine the file bit depth and sample rate etc, etc. Fancy going and doing a whole album and not knowing, worse, not asking! Would you want him on your session?

Smells like an endorsement to me.

PostPosted: Fri May 13, 2005 1:56 pm
by timo
by sound i mean loss of low end and my mix sounds cruchy and less warm.... no phase issues here

PostPosted: Fri May 13, 2005 4:21 pm
by Adam Dempsey
Points taken, Kris. Although Bob does use a bitscope & maybe he had little reason to question the supplied mixes if they werent labelled adequately. My point really just being that all systems will likely read .wavs without question. Not all systems will read SD2. In my book that makes .wavs far more of a "standard" - a guaranteed interchange format which does differ from SD2.

Timmo - not sure about what you're hearing but sounds like could be due to unneccesary dsp ('auto normalise' in the data CD burning?) and further 16 bit truncation. Best bounce mixes to 24/44.1 and burn to data CD, checking that any hidden dsp functions are bypassed.

PostPosted: Mon May 16, 2005 1:27 pm
by Adam Dempsey
.. including DC offset (after further thought). I'm not familiar with LE but any default DC offset working away behind the scenes, if accumulating at each bounce, could be another culprit. Compounded, of course, with cumulative bouncing & if lesser dsp resolution. Ever tried a 20Hz hi pass on a mix, even just 6 or 12dB/octave, then added another in series, also at 20Hz?

Although most DAWs now default to DC offset being bypassed (eg in Cool Edit's normalise function).

DC offset will/should be set well below 20Hz (Sonic Solutions from memory defaulted to 7Hz; classical music producers began insisting it be bypassed, having heard it affecting the lowest octave. Not that 7 Hz is directly audible, but the ripple of the sharp filter affecting higher frequencies). Just thinking out loud though..