Considerations for creating a stereo mixdown

- [Instructor] Mixing down is the process of recording the output of your session to a stereo file. This process is also commonly called bouncing your session, and it's often the last phase of production. Two common methods for creating a stereo mix down are one record your mix to a stereo track within your session, sometimes called bounce to tracks, or two render an external file of your stereo mix, also known as bounce to disk. Regardless which technique you use the basic principle applies. What you hear is what you will get.

That literally means that the mix you hear during playback is exactly what will be included in the bounce. Let me give you some examples of things to watch for and believe me I've heard bounces that exhibit each of these flaws. First muted tracks. If you have a track in your session muted, such as the lead vocal, your bounce is going to sound incomplete. (bass tone chimes) Not good, alright we don't want that.

Another potential problem is a session that has a single track soloed. In this case that's the only thing that we'll hear. ♫ Waiting out in the parking lot. - Also not good. ♫ After you get off - Now you may not think about this but your timeline selections will also affect your bounce. So you may end up with a partial session or more than what's needed. Here are a few tips. Check for selected clips in your session. Remember in normal operation an edit selection also creates a timeline selection and the timeline selection determines what you're going to hear during playback.

With no selection Pro Tools bounces the whole session. In this case you want to check for excess material after the end of the meaningful material. It's possible that you may have extra audio or a stray break point from an automation pass somewhere downstream and Pro Tools will continue to bounce until the last event on the longest track. In some cases your song might not start at the beginning of the session. In a case like this you'll want to make a timeline selection to control what gets included in the bounce.

Now you may be tempted to simply select the longest track in your session, but be sure it includes the earliest audio. In this case that's the base guitar down here, and also include padding at the end for reverb tails and delay repetitions to allow them to decay naturally. Regardless of how you create your final bounce, whether using bounce to disk or bounce to tracks, keep the above considerations in mind. Always test your playback prior to creating your final bounce and really test the playback of your rendered bounce file outside of Pro Tools to verify that everything sounds as it should.