Hello Everyone,

I thought I would start a little topic on when do you print your softsynths to audio and what do you do with the original MIDI/synths?
 
I am usually very reluctant to bounce to audio because I am afraid I am going to want to change the patch, change the notes, etc...   Yes I can save the patch and original MIDI, but I guess I just never feel done.

Was wondering - when do you guys print your MIDI to audio?  Also, do you keep the original synth/midi in the track but just archived or just delete them completely?
 
Just trying to get some ideas!
 
Thank You!

Freezing synths is also good so you have a copy of the track, the actual sound.  Just in case your synths don't work - the audio is still there.
 

AT
Freezing synths is also good so you have a copy of the track, the actual sound.  Just in case your synths don't work - the audio is still there.
 

you know i got into a habit of not doing that. Ive had a few synths over the years where after I unfroze the track, the preset reset and I could never get the same sound again.   This was many years ago though, maybe I should try again :)

It's simple. As soon as you feel good about the part (i.e. you're listening to it on loop and enjoying it) then print it. If you don't, there's always the chance that your fiddling will destroy exactly what it is that makes you feel good about it. I did this countless times before getting into the habit. At some point in the musical process you have to draw a line under things and put a lid on them. Doesn't matter if you're a home hobbyist or a platinum selling superstar in a multi million dollar studio recording the next hit. 
 
Take any of your favorite songs by any of your favorite bands. Every single part in those songs have at some point have had a line drawn under them, whether they're MIDI driven synths or live performances selected at the end of a succession of multiple takes. Take one of Dave Gilmour's classic guitar solos. They may now sound like classic, iconic performances that can't be improved upon, but I'm willing to bet that at some point before the album was mixed he thought "maybe I could have played them better if I'd done a few more takes." But he didn't, he put a lid on them and they went on to become classics. 
 
My usual routine is to print the track to audio with Sonar's synth recording capability, hide the MIDI track, set the audio track's input to "none" to disconnect it from the synth, then turn the synth off in the synth rack. If at some point during the mixing process you really start to think that the part is problematic, you can always unhide the MIDI track, turn the synth back on and reconnect the audio track to the synth. But because that's anything but a one-click process, you'll probably only do it if it's really necessary. There's no need to delete the synth, just turn it off in the rack. 

I go one step further than Sharke, I remove the synth completely. The midi track is archived, and the synth's settings are saved in the project folder as a preset, in case I ever need to recall it. Honestly, I believe it is best to print all tracks and effects before you are completely done with a project. That way you can save a version of the project with no plugins in case you ever need to open it years down the road and the current plugins either don't work or no longer exist.
 
Regards,
Dan

In a small project, almost never. 
 
Back in the day, when I had a system with limited resources, I would render the audio to wave and reuse the synth with a new sample for a different track.   I would keep the midi track and hide it in the event that I wanted to change something with that track at some future point. 
 
Midi tracks take up very little hard drive space so keeping them is not a big deal. Just keep notes somewhere regarding what synth and sample/patch was used.

When possible, I never bounce soft synth tracks. That's just OCD, though. The thought that I might want to make a last-minute tweak keeps me from commitment.
 
In the case of drum tracks, I do make changes right up to the end because they're fake drums I'm trying to make sound more realistic. Real drummers interact with and support the other instruments. You don't want a metronome drone for a drum track, even if that's what you initially started out with. I add ghost notes, accents, advances and short fills in places where the mix needs them, and can't know where those places are until late in the mix.
 
There is a downside to this, however. One obvious problem is you might exhaust your RAM and CPU and have no choice but to freeze some synths. But I ran into a less-foreseeable problem when I moved from a 32-bit system to a 64-bit system and there were a couple synths and effects that weren't compatible. I lost the ability to modify a few projects as a result. Fortunately, my old computer had been underpowered so most tracks had been frozen out of necessity. Losing synths and effects is a real possibility due to draconian licensing schemes that constantly threaten to disable themselves, so freezing them is insurance against that.
 
Another possibility is that a synth or sample library doesn't sound the same after freezing. It's not common but it does happen. There have been times when I didn't realize the problem, until I un-froze a synth for editing only to find that I could not get back to its previous sound. Sample libraries can be prone to this, if you've installed an update or modified an .nki since the original library was frozen. 
 
So to summarize: freezing optimizes computer resources and can be good insurance. But it does restrict your creative freedom. Security versus freedom, it's an age-old balancing act.

I almost never freeze synth tracks...I have 32gb of RAM and 12 cores.  I have no reason to freeze them.  Freezing them only takes up MORE HD space.  The only time I really do freeze them is for effects.  If I want to completely manipulate the sound by doing random stutters, add reverse reverb, or do strange effects not possible via MIDI or other VSTs I have. 

^^^ Ditto.
 
 

I used to bounce all at end of tracking i.e. start of the true mixing stage - now I use synth record (as it allows to bounce all in one go rather than waiting forever for a sequential freeze) and more often I record the synth audio while tracking and only record MIDI for backup - which helps in the decision process because if you like the audio track and it fits the tune why bother fiddling any more with it?
 
I always backup the MIDI tracks and try to save the synth settings (but mostly to have templates for starting other tunes because IMHO you can never be sure if you ever get exactly the same sound back later, all vendors claim to be backward compatible but all of them provide regular updates adding fixes and features, so if you remix years later you can't be sure it'll sound the same)