Bounce, Merge, Transform, Export Options?

[Sethares]

I'm recently coming to S1 from another DAW. In that DAW, the bouncing or rendering process has two commands: a "bounce to disk" (where you get to select which tracks get bounced) and a "merge" (which combines lots of little events in the arrangement view into one larger event). Arriving in S1, I am a little intimidated by the number of rendering commands. So far I have found:

Bounce (and its brother, Bounce to new Track)
Mixdown Selection
Transform to Rendered Audio
Export Mixdown
Export Stems
Merge

And there also appear to be two others:

Dragging an event to a new (audio) track

A small "Render" button in the Inspector (which seems to appear and disappear near the "Event FX" label, depending on what is selected)

I am having a hard time wrapping my head around possible uses for all these! The two Export commands seem clear (use at the end of a song project). The fact that you can "unMerge" makes me suspicious of the Merge command. Mixdown and Transform seem opaque. Is the render button just another way to implement one of the menu commands, and if so, which one? What would be typical situations where I should prefer one of these over another?

Thanks for your help untangling this!

 

[ianaeillo]

Welcome to Studio One! It's a bit wild, the number of bounce options but they are all usable. I had a couple of paragraphs typed out explaining the differences, but my annoyance at the Export To Stems option took me on quite the tangent. SoI'll post Gregor's much more in-depth and much more official explanation. Check it out!

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[Edu]

If you are new to S1 you may not yet know the wonderful tutorial database implemented by @Lukas which includes several videos from various authors.

You can find the database at

Studio One Tutorials | Studio One Toolbox

Explore our extensive collection of free Studio One tutorials, covering everything from basic setup to advanced techniques.

s1toolbox.com

And for example you can search for "mixdown" or "bouncing" to find further help

 

[Sethares]

Thanks for the pointers -- Gregor has a video for everything! GregorTV is now on my personal playlist nestled right between Hulu and Disney+

Gregor divides the rendering options into: Event--based, Track-based, Channel-Based, and Global. This makes things a lot clearer. It may also point to one of the reasons S1 has so many different options -- the separation between Tracks and Channels. In other DAWs that I have used, there is a one-to-one correspondence between tracks and channels whereas in S1, channels and tracks need not correspond. I find this one of the more confusing aspects of S1, since I seem to be repeatedly having to look up what is really connected to what. Hopefully I'll get used to it.

I know I asked a very general question above, and I appreciate the general nature of the replies. The specific issue that led me to try and sort out the rendering options was this: I have an event on a track to which Melodyne has been applied. I want to do two things (1) bounce/render the effect in order to reduce the CPU load, and (2) keep a copy around in case I later need to make changes.

If I understand the Gregor video, for (1) I can bounce. If I bounce in place, then the old version is overwritten and I can no longer edit. So I should choose Bounce to a New Track. This will give a new version that is Melodyne-free. But -- the old track still has Melodyne and is still using CPU. Is there a way of disabling Melodyne on the old track that still leaves the option of re-enabling in the future? It appears that simply muting the old track does not disable the Melodyne processing, it just makes the track inaudible.

Thanks!

 

[ianaeillo]

Thanks for the pointers -- Gregor has a video for everything! GregorTV is now on my personal playlist nestled right between Hulu and Disney+

Gregor divides the rendering options into: Event--based, Track-based, Channel-Based, and Global. This makes things a lot clearer. It may also point to one of the reasons S1 has so many different options -- the separation between Tracks and Channels. In other DAWs that I have used, there is a one-to-one correspondence between tracks and channels whereas in S1, channels and tracks need not correspond. I find this one of the more confusing aspects of S1, since I seem to be repeatedly having to look up what is really connected to what. Hopefully I'll get used to it.

I know I asked a very general question above, and I appreciate the general nature of the replies. The specific issue that led me to try and sort out the rendering options was this: I have an event on a track to which Melodyne has been applied. I want to do two things (1) bounce/render the effect in order to reduce the CPU load, and (2) keep a copy around in case I later need to make changes.

If I understand the Gregor video, for (1) I can bounce. If I bounce in place, then the old version is overwritten and I can no longer edit. So I should choose Bounce to a New Track. This will give a new version that is Melodyne-free. But -- the old track still has Melodyne and is still using CPU. Is there a way of disabling Melodyne on the old track that still leaves the option of re-enabling in the future? It appears that simply muting the old track does not disable the Melodyne processing, it just makes the track inaudible.

Thanks!

As I do not trust any daw to return to the state I’ve left it in before rendering, what I will typically do is finish my edits, duplicate track (complete) and then disable and hide the duplicate. Then I feel free to bounce the region, track, or channel as often as i would like. This feels to be a workaround, I’m sure, but it’s been part of my workflow since destructive editing days so it just is what it is for me. Perhaps someone else has a better workflow.

 

[Gary Shepherd]

I generally use Bounce, Bounce to New Track to print audio with FX, and Mixdown to combine tracks.