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how do you guys feel about bouncing to stems for a mixdown? - dodz - 1st March 2006

do you find if you bounce to audio stems, the sound quality is noticeably comprimised?


what about repeated bouncing of the same track in order to free up CPU? worth it? or should a more clever/minimal approach be taken to avoid resulting audio degredation?


has anyone here done any real testing with jitter phenomenon or the like? if so, what did you find?


i need to do a lot more research on this kind of stuff, but i think it's worthy of consideration at any rate.


how do you guys feel about bouncing to stems for a mixdown? - Macc - 1st March 2006

Look at you with your all-new-pinched-from-yer-uncle-terminology! Teef



I wouldn't worry about it, but it depends on your host, as well as a few other things.

Host things: If your host is sample accurate then it shouldn't be a problem, as it is all calculated offline. As such it is pure 'addition' and not subject to real-time phenomena such as jitter. Some people may well have a word about this ('it sounds different!!'), but in my experience and experiments what you see is what you hear is what you get.

Bit depth + levels: Bouncing very quietly then turning up will increase the level of quantisation noise. Bouncing at 24-bit helps a lot, but best to keep good levels, as always!

Repeated bouncing: Same thing really - if you are working at lower bit depths there will always be rounding errors. If you bounce the same thing LOOOOOOADS (and I mean LOOOOOOADS as in hundreds, or thousands) of times you might start hearing it, but it's nothing like as bad as the quantisation errors you get from recording/bouncing really low.


One thing worth bearing in mind is the offline processing of material. If you process 16-bit material offline, and do plenty of processing to it, you'll get much worse errors than if you are processing a 24-bit file. Same goes for the quality of the plugin. Most upsample to 32 or 64-bit internally to reduce internal quantisation errors, but if you put all that back into a 16-bit file, you'll get much worse rounding errors than 24 bit.



However, almost all of this is 'y-axis' stuff - jitter is mainly an 'x-axis' (oe time) thing. Jitter is dictated by soundcard and PC (but more the soundcard). But in offline processes this should not be a problem.

So far as I am aware this is right - anyone that can correct me here?

It's not something that has ever been so noticable that I have thought 'where is that coming from??'.


Look at it this way - it's much much better than old skool bouncing from two tape tracks to one repeatedly! You could do that like two or three times before it became papshshshshshhhhhhhhh Lol


how do you guys feel about bouncing to stems for a mixdown? - dodz - 1st March 2006

so, in your opinion, bottom line is that as long as you work in 24bit, and keep a good level on the track that you're bouncing, any rounding errors/unaccountable phenomenon will be negligable. (definately not audible, presumably) and repeated bouncing using the same approach will not degrade with only a few times through.


with the offline thing.....i just want to make sure i'm understanding correctly....so, if a lot of plugins upsample to 32 or 64 before returning to 24, will THIS have an audible impact?


and if so, is there a way around it? or is it just the nature of TEH BEAST!?!?!111


how do you guys feel about bouncing to stems for a mixdown? - ALPHA OMEGA - 2nd March 2006

I'mm interested in doing some of this myself for bigger projects as it makes mixing down a lot easier & future remixing & radio editing etc... much much easier to deal with.

Haven't tried working in 24bits though & that could b a problem as u can't burn the files 2 cd as 24bit.

Or maybe it's just my shitty burning sware thats telling me this?


how do you guys feel about bouncing to stems for a mixdown? - Macc - 2nd March 2006

You can't burn 24-bit files to an audio CD, as the audio CD (Red Book) specifictaion is 16bit, 44.1kHz.

If you want to put them on an audio CD you have to convert them to 16-bit, but doing that directly makes working at 24-bit pointless, so you need to use dither to preserve some of the extra resolution on a 16 bit-disk. With dither (so they tell me) the apparent perceived resolution from a 16-bit CD can be as high as bit 20 or 21 bits (provided you worked at 24-bits throughout the project).

Although, making dnb there aren't many times where that matters cos you don't get too many quiet parts... Grin


how do you guys feel about bouncing to stems for a mixdown? - ALPHA OMEGA - 2nd March 2006

so what's the best thing to store all your 24bit files to,if cd's are out of the question?


how do you guys feel about bouncing to stems for a mixdown? - Macc - 2nd March 2006

dodz Wrote:so, in your opinion, bottom line is that as long as you work in 24bit, and keep a good level on the track that you're bouncing, any rounding errors/unaccountable phenomenon will be negligable. (definately not audible, presumably) and repeated bouncing using the same approach will not degrade with only a few times through.

in my opinion, yes. the way i see it is that you can't do anything about it anyway other than keep your levels good, use good gain structuring and so on - ie use the same principles as in any mixing. of course minimal rebouncing is better, but it's soooo much better than fostex cassette tape 4-track etc :d it isn't worth worrying about really.

there will be some real proper audio snob who says 'it's really awful' etc etc cos they read it on a forum, but if you can hear it in a full mix then good luck to you. on, say, a solo acoustic guitar track then it is a bit different, but then you won't be doing many effects etc type-things on that anyway.



Quote:with the offline thing.....i just want to make sure i'm understanding correctly....so, if a lot of plugins upsample to 32 or 64 before returning to 24, will this have an audible impact?


all such processors that upsample do it whether it is real-time or offline processing occuring. it's all the same to them. in fact - it's all the same anyway. don't get confused into thinking that there's any difference - when you hit play on cubase or whatever, it's all still numbers - it isn't an analogue signal that becomes digital when you bounce it, or something. you apply a certain process (say, eq) online or offline, it's the same thing doing the same thing, giving the same thing.

anyway, the 'audible impact' of the upsampling is that there aren't such bad rounding errors, ie the process occurs at a much higher precision than 'necessary', meaning the final result is much better represented.

Quote:and if so, is there a way around it? or is it just the nature of teh beast!?!?!111

all of it is the nature of the beast man... you just have to work with it. luckily it's nothing like as bad as warbly tape, chronic noise floor etc etc that existed in the old days Wink



anyyyyyway, all this is y-axis stuff and nothing to do with jitter. jitter is *kind of* analogous to rounding errors on the x-axis.

that is, because of natural inaccuracies of clocks, ie the internal clock in your soundcard, samples may not be taken at exactly the specified intervals.

example: say you are recording something at 44.1khz. that means your soundcard looks at the signal every 1/44100th of a second = 2.2675737 × 10-5 = 0.000022675737 seconds. then it sees the level is i dunno, -6db, and 'plots' it on the graph that amounts to your final waveform.

now cos of the inaccuracies of the clock, say cos of the nature of the crystal they use or power fluctuations blah blah (clock construction is a whoooole area i can't be fukt to go into and don't know that much about anyway... plus it is fucking boring), it might sample it at a slightly different time.


the quoted clock jitter for my emu 1212m is less than 1 nanosecond - one of if not the lowest of cheapskate-loser-level soundcards. let's call it one nanosecond for arguments' sake, meaning the error on a given sample could be half a nanosecond (!) either way.

so:

sample 1 taken

0.000022675737 seconds elapse

sample 2 taken

0.000022676237 seconds elapse (max of jitter)

sample 3 taken

0.000022675237 second elapse (min of jitter)

etc


so if you were sampling a sine wave, this sine wave wouldn't quite be a perfect sine wave - points aren't exactly where they should be. they are all 'believed' to be at the correct intervals, that is, every 1/44100th of a second, but they aren't (it's an error innit!).


similarly for playing back - all this is getting worked out by your sequencer (which 'listens to' the clock in your soundcard) and added together, then played back. if you had a perfect sine wave in your sequencer (if such a thing were possible in a digital system), then jitter means that it would play back imperfectly.



but


it's fucking nothing is it????!!!?!?? fucking half a fucking a nanopoxybollockingsecond?!?!?!?


so it isn't exactly audible - that is, it's not like you don't trust your pc to play back something that sounds very very much like what it is supposed to sound like. it's not as if jitter is like pushing your thumb on the label of a bit of vinyl and the pitch is going all over the shop etc etc...

in my own experience, the only time i have ever noticed jitter was when i first put my emu 1212m in and hit play for the first time. i noticed straight away that there was some sense (not even audible exactly, just perceived more than heard Baffled ) of clarity about things like reverb. it just felt better somehow. it was sooooooooooo subtle, but so definite. it really blew me away. after the first time it was pretty much unnoticeable as i got accustomed so quickly to such a small effect.



whatever, it's not like peeps down at the club are going to be saying 'ohhh Chin .... sounds like that amen has some jitter problems'.


how do you guys feel about bouncing to stems for a mixdown? - Macc - 2nd March 2006

ALPHA OMEGA Wrote:so what's the best thing to store all your 24bit files to,if cd's are out of the question?

Hahaha Hahaha Hahaha

You are a berk.

You can't burn 24-bit files to an AUDIO CD, the same as you can't burn pictures or word documents and put them in your stereo Lol They don't fit the AUDIO CD specification.

Just burn them as a DATA disk instead. Preferably rar them up first - you can get a lot more on a disk that way (lots of 0's in most 24-bit files).


Hahaha


how do you guys feel about bouncing to stems for a mixdown? - elektrovert - 2nd March 2006

Lads!

what are "Audio stems" then?
never heard that term before.


how do you guys feel about bouncing to stems for a mixdown? - Macc - 2nd March 2006

Tracks, basically Grin Usually specifically meaning ones with more than one part in.

So you may have 500 individual orchestra parts and you bounce those to one track, there's your stem.I think that's right anyway - can't say I have ever bothered to put a name on it - just bouncing innit!


how do you guys feel about bouncing to stems for a mixdown? - Senator Adam - 2nd March 2006

macc Wrote:whatever, it's not like peeps down at the club are going to be saying 'ohhh Chin .... sounds like that amen has some jitter problems'.


hahaha. i do that all the time!

nice lesson macc. you are always in top form Gitarre2


how do you guys feel about bouncing to stems for a mixdown? - dodz - 2nd March 2006

Macc Wrote:Tracks, basically Grin Usually specifically meaning ones with more than one part in.

So you may have 500 individual orchestra parts and you bounce those to one track, there's your stem.I think that's right anyway - can't say I have ever bothered to put a name on it - just bouncing innit!


yeah, can be....or individuals....just depends on the context.


my uncle was bouncing to 'stems' for this new school jazz pat metheny style project he's been working on.

the only reason he'd done it, essentially, was so the mastering engineer could gain further insight into what was going on with everything that made up 'the whole'.

you could also utilize it in mixing if you were working heavily with internal effects and needed to free up some CPU without using those 'freeze' features etc.....

ie.) you've built some swirley montrosity of an atmospheric but you're using convolution reverbs, and delays, and all kind of shit that's ultimately kaking your system, so you get it sounding how you want, and commit to it by bouncing it down to audio.


macc : thanx man, that clears it up a bunch.


how do you guys feel about bouncing to stems for a mixdown? - Macc - 2nd March 2006

Bouncing effects is so fundamental and standard in my workflow that I've enever even thought about it Grin


how do you guys feel about bouncing to stems for a mixdown? - dodz - 2nd March 2006

Macc Wrote:Bouncing effects is so fundamental and standard in my workflow that I've enever even thought about it Grin


i wasn't talking to you, you cheeky monkey! Roll


how do you guys feel about bouncing to stems for a mixdown? - ALPHA OMEGA - 2nd March 2006

thanks 4 calling me a berk macc Icon_cry

so data disk is the way 2 go for storage..

just needed 2 know as backing up 24bit fils is a serious biznizz s they're so much bigger than normal 16 bit files on ur hard drives.

thanks for the tips sir Xyxthumbs


how do you guys feel about bouncing to stems for a mixdown? - dodz - 2nd March 2006

alpha omega Wrote:thanks 4 calling me a berk macc Icon_cry

so data disk is the way 2 go for storage..

just needed 2 know as backing up 24bit fils is a serious biznizz s they're so much bigger than normal 16 bit files on ur hard drives.

thanks for the tips sir Xyxthumbs



yeah, use data for sure.


you should get either (or both, really) an external hd or an external dvd burner.

4 gig a pop for dvd data, and you can get external hd's for about a dollar a gig these days! it's a good time to buy that kind of thing.


i've been using dvd lately, and i'll just compile a bunch of stuff that needs backing up, and make a little list/label thing and slot it in a cd binder to forget about. (and not have to worry about)

losing stuff sssssssuuuuuuuucks!


how do you guys feel about bouncing to stems for a mixdown? - Macc - 2nd March 2006

alpha omega Wrote:thanks 4 calling me a berk macc Icon_cry

so data disk is the way 2 go for storage..

just needed 2 know as backing up 24bit fils is a serious biznizz s they're so much bigger than normal 16 bit files on ur hard drives.

thanks for the tips sir Xyxthumbs

sorry about the berk thing - i just thought everyone knew the difference between data and audio cd's... i forget how old you are Teef

24bit files are exactly 1.5 times the size of 16bit Smile


use winrar - select whatever folder/files it is you want archived, right click> add to archive - set compression method to best, and if need be go to the files (or advanced?) tab and set 'put each file to separate archive'.

then burn/store those.

you can get a lot of space saved this way!


how do you guys feel about bouncing to stems for a mixdown? - Macc - 2nd March 2006

dodz Wrote:
Macc Wrote:Bouncing effects is so fundamental and standard in my workflow that I've enever even thought about it Grin


i wasn't talking to you, you cheeky monkey! Roll

I wasn't talking to you either, just talking.... talking.... Oops


how do you guys feel about bouncing to stems for a mixdown? - ALPHA OMEGA - 2nd March 2006

Macc-do u use 24bit files 4 ya d&b stuff?

I'm not sure if d&b has a place 4 24bit music yet....I know trance & pop stuff would definitely benefit but something,like d&b, that gets played on shit club soundsystems & burnt to shitty vinyl would not really show any benefits me thinks?

Baffled

not flaming just curious & sparking conversion Smile


how do you guys feel about bouncing to stems for a mixdown? - subvert - 2nd March 2006

alpha omega Wrote:macc-do u use 24bit files 4 ya d&b stuff?

i'm not sure if d&b has a place 4 24bit music yet....i know trance & pop stuff would definitely benefit but something,like d&b, that gets played on shit club soundsystems & burnt to shitty vinyl would not really show any benefits me thinks?

Baffled

not flaming just curious & sparking conversion Smile

if you're recording vox then id def use 24 bit files,

im off out in a bit, ill write my thoughts on this thread tomorrow

Xyxthumbs


how do you guys feel about bouncing to stems for a mixdown? - ALPHA OMEGA - 2nd March 2006

24bit for vocals?

I can understand that...especially on stuff that will get radio play & released mainly on cd.


how do you guys feel about bouncing to stems for a mixdown? - Macc - 2nd March 2006

I use 24-bit for everything. It's worth it - cos of the processing rounding errors and all that - even in dnb I think. It's not like low level reverb trails or super quiet classical-type things are present in dnb, but When something gets processed, doing it at 24bit saves a bit of worry.

All IMO!


how do you guys feel about bouncing to stems for a mixdown? - ALPHA OMEGA - 3rd March 2006

interesting,I may try it out on this house lp I'm doing at the mo.

I'll have to setup my soundcard & logic to handle 24bit files but that's easy enough (i think)

may even setup the akai for 24bit sampling aswell & store all those samples to my pc hard drive since the akai h/d is filled 2 the brim Icon_sad

incidentally how the fuck do I back up my akai hard drive???????

it's not like I can hook a dvd player up 2 the thing so the only option is to manually drag it to the pc & save it there Baffled

longwinded hardware bullshit!!!!

anyway,I'm digressing...


how do you guys feel about bouncing to stems for a mixdown? - subvert - 3rd March 2006

ALPHA OMEGA Wrote:24bit for vocals?

I can understand that...especially on stuff that will get radio play & released mainly on cd.

its more about being confident that you can work at a level where you're not gonna clip the A/D converters and still have a good signal to work with. i.e headroom.


how do you guys feel about bouncing to stems for a mixdown? - ALPHA OMEGA - 3rd March 2006

I have a little problem...

How do I setup logic for 24bit recording?

I've gone into the audio preferences & ticked all thoe boxes for 24bit recording but the audio loop I made is still at 16bits (44khz)

what's happening????

Baffled