Hi guys,  new to this, couple questions for you:
1) Wondering how you approach mixing a song with midi-originated drum tracks. (I have EZdrummer and Superior Drummer.) Does anyone just leave the drum tracks in midi form for the mixing process?  Or do you always bounce / freeze the midi tracks to true audio tracks before mixing ?  I realize the separate audio tracks give you total flexibility, but you can do quite a bit with Superior Drummer to tailor the sound / mix... plus, if you want to change something, you can just do it on the fly with the drums still in the midi form. 
2) If you use the "separate audio track for each drum" method, do you send these all to a "drum bus" for overall tailoring ?
 
Any thoughts on this would be appreciated, thanks much.

Hi Chevy.
 
I use Superior and always render to audio before I mix.  However, if you have the processor power you could certainly mix using the superior mixer/FX for your drums.  I always send the drum tracks to a 'Drums Sum' bus but I also have a 'Parallel Compression' bus and several 'Drums Reverb' buses as well.
 
HTH
 
Paul

Hmmm...  I guess it would be a pretty processor-hungry synth... What exactly would let me know I don't have the processor power ?   I mean before actual dropouts, would there be some subtle latency issues that would mess up the song timing or feel before dropouts occur ? Being kinda new at this, I worry about that aspect, as one time I added the LP64 multiband EQ to the bass track, and it changed the timing on the track without any other hint there was trouble, and I didn't notice there was anything wrong right away. 

I would be interested in this as well. I use BFD 3 primarily, sometimes AD2, and usually just mix inside the program, mostly for convenience sake. I've got plenty of processor power. I've heard it said that BFD effects are not as good as VST's, but I really haven't tested thoroughly. And, I agree with Chevy that flexibility is key. So, is there a compelling reason to render to audio?

It depends how much CPU power you have and how much processing on the drums you want to do.  I use AD2 and use the built-in effects and do the drum mixing inside of it.  I like having one track for the drums and I can adjust the balance inside the plugin.  I don't bounce to audio for further processing.  I don't typically have a ton of VST instruments running at the same time though.
 
However, if you are someone who wants to route each kit piece to a bunch of different external effects and sends then you may want to conserve the CPU power by bouncing to audio. 

I always turn midi into audio as a matter of practice. Without that there's always the temptation to keep editing. It helps to mix audio. Midi is part of the creative arranging process. The rendering to audio can be likened to the recoding stage which has to occur before you mix. Sure there'll be small edits if you pick up a mistake but at that stage it's likely I'd use Drum Replacer now that it's available.

I apply this personal rule not only to drums but to all midi. Mixing in audio keeps that process in the one medium.

And yes, send all your drums to a bus. I mix the drums by themselves and once I'm generally happy I can use the bus fader for mixing with the rest of the audio. I tend to mix the kick and snare drums along with crash cymbals first when I work out the dynamics of the whole piece once I have those strong percussive elements sitting correct in relation to one another then it's time to listen to all the drums on their own and mix them before proceeding with the rest of the piece. Of course that's the way I learned and I'm used to doing that. You may find something that suits you more. But it's a place to start when confronted by maybe a dozen or more drum tracks without counting all the other tracks sometimes as many as a hundred or more.

It would seem to me that if you wanted to automate the drums they'd have to be output to their own tracks.

I used to run a full set of drums from BFD2 with up to 25 separate audio tracks on my old Q6700 with 4Gb of RAM under WinXP 32, so you shouldn't struggle at all as long as your machine is reasonably up to date