Greetings,

Last night I finished a 10 track Logic Pro 8 sequence. This sequence is comprised of internal Logic software instruments. I have it all mixed (the software MIDI tracks) and now I am at the point where I want to use the “Bounce” feature and bounce each individual MIDI internal software track to an audio track.

I am wondering a couple of things. First of all when I go to bounce each individual track for example, I click on the “S” button in the track name display (on the left side of the arrange window). When I go to bounce it, all of a sudden when it starts bouncing, the “R” button (Record enable) lights up dark red on the MIDI internal software track that I am bouncing. Why is the Record Enable button on the software instrument track lighting up? Should it be lighting up?

Second of all, after I get all of the MIDI software tracks bounced (tracks 1 - 10) to individual audio tracks, I notice when I go playback the audio tracks, the levels are down on the mix quite a bit. It makes me scratch my head because I had all the levels with the Internal software MIDI track set for optimum, so I am baffled as to why the levels are down when I play back the bounced audio tracks. Of course when I bounce each software MIDI track to each audio track I could Normalize (when I bounce) each audio track but then I will have to go back and remix all of my audio tracks (which then makes me wonder why I went to the trouble of getting a nice mix for the internal software MIDI tracks).

Any thoughts?

Hey Bill,
there are three difrent ways to ‘bounce’ and you can freeze a track as well so, I’m not exactly sure which method you’re referring to but, as a general rule, I think it is better to attempt to mix after bouncing the software instrument tracks to audio. I am curious as to what you’re hoping to achieve by bouncing them to audio ;) I mean, there are some good reasons why you would want to do that- among them: reduce processor load while continuing to build the project; export tracks or sub-mixes for mastering; export audio to create loops, what’s yours?

Why is the Record Enable button on the software instrument track lighting up?

The record button is verifying which track you are bouncing: it is a record process…

It makes me scratch my head because I had all the levels with the Internal software MIDI track set for optimum

Not quite sure what ‘set to optimum’ means.

as a general rule, I think it is better to attempt to mix after bouncing the software instrument tracks to audio

When you bounce tracks and bring them back into the same project (I don’t know whether you did that or not ; any channel strip assignments effecting the Output Bus will effect those audio tracks. So they will be receiving a second treatment.

For instance, I’m currently working on a song for which I’ve chosen the ‘Final Ballad Master’ channel strip. It contains a Gain Control, Multi-meter; channel EQ; Multi-compressor; Adaptive limiter; and, a second Multi-Meter. If I bounce my software instruments tracks the resulting audio is effected by the everything on that Output Bus.

If I bring those tracks back into the project. With the effects on the Output Bus active: they are doubly effected…

I record each of the Midi tracks as audio because in the future I may or may not still have my Motif XS6.  I may be on a different keyboard then.  By making each Midi track an audio track, I have forever captured the sound of the Motif XS on my sequence into audio tracks.

When I talk about optimum level I am saying that I had the Midi volume sliders at a high enough level (not clipping, but not too low) that when I play back the Audio tracks the levels on each of the tracks is quite a bit lower.  I sounds like I should not bother mixing until I get them into audio tracks?

I misunderstood something: I thought we were talking about software Instrument Tracks. Of course, It always makes sense to record the audio from the XS.

Also, understand that “MIDI Volume” and ‘Audio Volume” is not the same thing. There really is not such a thing as MIDI clipping. And, a “good MIDI volume level” is not the same as a “good Audio volume level”. And, the red you see when a MIDI channel exceeds volume 100 or so DOES NOT = audio clipping…
Just a thought…
peace…