Bus record vs. internal bounce: BIG DIFFERENCE

[whitegirllust]

A friends mastering engineer recommended not bouncing final versions but rather doing stem summing on busses - meaning break your track down so everything is going to 3 or 4 different busses, record those then record those as your final mix on another bus. Basically bypassing the master in all stages of recording and lightening the load of your processor doing all 18 channels at once.

Last night I was finalizing a remix that will be released commercially and decided to try it. I did not notice that big of a difference in the audio files or devices such as drum rack however I had a bass line and synth line coming straight out or Arturia's moog and CS80 (respectively). The difference was shocking.

The bounced versions were clearly more dull. You can see the wave form as being different as well. It is interesting though that by recording the bus by directing CS80 channel's audio out to the bus, the delays pattern seemed to be affected (I was using the internal CS80 delay) and changed the vibe of that section. However if I record it by routing the the cs80 to the master then routing the "audio from" on the bus to be the cs-80 it seemed unchanged.

Does anyone have any experience with this? Why would the internal delay of the soft synth change from how i routed it to a buss?

[Genesis]

Hey man, I had a similar problem occur in a previous production, except it was the timing in live's arpeggiator that had gone weird. I found the problem was that the 'Back to Arrangement' button (the button to the right of the overdub, or, 'OVR' button) was on. As weird as it seems, When this button is on I find that timing effects (i.e. delay, arp.) are somehow affected, and playback differently. When I shut it off, the arpeggiator went back to it's original timing.

Hope it helps bro.

[buzby]

A friends mastering engineer recommended not bouncing final versions but rather doing stem summing on busses - meaning break your track down so everything is going to 3 or 4 different busses, record those then record those as your final mix on another bus. Basically bypassing the master in all stages of recording and lightening the load of your processor doing all 18 channels at once.

interesting

does it matter what you group into the buses? - as in do you keep things which sit in a similar frequency range (kick drum, bass) separate or can you place the kick and bass into the same bus etc etc

[DJMillsy]

Very interesting thread. I would assume it makes sense to group tracks by frequency, low, low mid, high mid & highs. At the very least it leaves some flexibility for extra processing such as compression if needed. When I get a chance I will invest some time into this and report back.

[whitegirllust]

Yeah I was wondering the same thing in regards to whether the sums should be in similar freq ranges. Part of me would be inclined to think that by separating frequencies per stem that it would minimize competition within each stem - ultimately though they will all be put back together though.

Now please note that I only noticed a real difference with my VST instruments. I could not really tell the difference with audio.

Does anyone know what occurs during the bouncing process? I am not technically savvy enough to know. I was thinking that maybe the way the program reads the VST data is not 100% while bus recording captures all the data?

I also know LIVE has a built in buffer on the master so you can accidentally go into the red in a live show - perhaps this somehow calculates in as well?

[whitegirllust]

Oh, and thanks for the tip Genesis...

[Superchibisan]

"The difference was shocking."

if you could explain the difference, i'd love to hear it.

[jdg]

i'm calling BS on this.

just did a simple test.
a render completely nulls with a recording done to from a bus

most likely user error somewhere.

[glasvegas]

The bounced versions were clearly more dull. You can see the wave form as being different as well. It is interesting though that by recording the bus by directing CS80 channel's audio out to the bus, the delays pattern seemed to be affected (I was using the internal CS80 delay) and changed the vibe of that section. However if I record it by routing the the cs80 to the master then routing the "audio from" on the bus to be the cs-80 it seemed unchanged.

Turn off any kind of warping on the clip you have recorded and then try again. I think this is your problem.

[DJMillsy]

i'm calling BS on this.

just did a simple test.
a render completely nulls with a recording done to from a bus

most likely user error somewhere.

Hi jdg,

What test did you perform?

[timothyallan]

i'm calling BS on this.

just did a simple test.
a render completely nulls with a recording done to from a bus

most likely user error somewhere.

+1 : nulls all around

[bodo]

More nulls here, had a comprehensive arrangment with 5 busses, and no difference either...

[speak_onion]

I've noticed a similar thing wtih the Automat softsynth. I think it has more to do with the plugin with Ableton. I don't use that plugin anymore.

[CutterFiltoff]

I would still like an external summing mixer....... too bad a good one is more then $1000.

[mbira]

Curious-when you say "null", are you doing a phase invert and finding nothing on the output, or are you just saying "these sound the same"? It's no secret that doing stems makes a big difference. THis is old news in the PT world...