Beepster
Right. Under ideal conditions they should be identical but it is, AFAIK, more resource intensive thus more prone to dropouts and other flubs/hiccups related to the system tripping over itself.

This is not accurate. Unlike real time bounce, fast bounce is actually immune to dropouts since it scales performance based on cpu availability. A real time bounce will actually drop out if load is too high which can happen if your project is already maxing the cpu since bounce has extra load due to file io...

Noel Borthwick [Cakewalk]
...Unlike real time bounce, fast bounce is actually immune to dropouts since it scales performance based on cpu availability. A real time bounce will actually drop out if load is too high which can happen if your project is already maxing the cpu since bounce has extra load due to file io...

I did not know this... Maybe I'm not giving FB a chance due to some issue I've had in the (long?) past. I know I had a problem in the past with one of my soft synths dropping out during FB, but that was a number of versions ago on an XP machine with little memory... I'm going to give FB another try.
 
Thanks for chiming in, Noel.
 
Best,
Rob

Thanks, Noel... finally some real definitive rational... I've been using real time as I sometimes forget to change latency settings which become obvious in real time... and always like the extra listen... but this really chinces it for me...

When using any decent amount of controller data near the start, I find both fast and realttime bounce to be inaccurate. Orchestral fade ins with mod data for instance can be randomly jumpy. Whilst inserting a decent number of blank measures including 'unheard' controller data before each track actually plays usually solves this, I do wonder why either version of bounce doesn't register this data as written and needs time to catch up. I have witnessed this on 3 different systems so cannot be just my 'setup'

Craig, I know this wasn't your main point and I honestly haven't looked deeply into Cakewalk's midi-fx so perhaps they do something unique, but I'm quite positive Logic has had midi fx since at least version 4 (which I used) and probably since the beginning, through the environment. In fact one of the demo's of the environment was the Popcorn song which was built entirely from a single note and a bunch of cascading midi fx.

There was MIDI processing in the environment building section, but IIRC they were never brought out into plug-ins the way they are now in Logic Pro X. Although MIDI processing has been around since at least the days of the Commodore-64, as far as I know Cakewalk was the first to create an actual plug-in format, similar to how Steinberg created a VST format for audio. People are still designing MIDI plug-ins in the MFX format (e.g., tencrazy.com).

Lest new users become confused, you CANNOT use fast bounce/export if you have external synth input, virtual instruments that are not frozen/recorded, or Melodyne edits that have not been bounced down.  For this reason, all of my exports are real time.

Melodyne can most definitely be fast bounced and virtual instruments as well. The only time you need it with virtual instruments is if the input is from a midi controller in real time.

Noel Borthwick [Cakewalk]
Melodyne can most definitely be fast bounced and virtual instruments as well. 

I think the reason for the misconception about virtual instruments is because unless both the MIDI and audio tracks are selected, the instrument won't bounce. I always "Select All" before a fast bounce.
 
BTW thanks for chiming in, Noel. I've heard you're mostly known for your jazz guitar chops, but you seem to know quite a bit about software 
 
I need to check "Meet the Bakers" and see if you're in there yet.