I use it to make invisible clips visible, but is there some other purpose in using it?
 
Thanks,
Mike

The term "bounce" comes from the old analog multitrack days when you would combine 2 or more recorded tracks together onto a new track so you could record new material on the previously recorded tracks.
 
It is similar with digital tracks but far more functional.
 
Bounce to Clips: https://www.cakewalk.com/Documentation?product=Cakewalk&language=3&help=EditingAudio.15.html
 
Bounce to Tracks: https://www.cakewalk.com/Documentation?product=Cakewalk&language=3&help=Dialogs1.14.html
 
Bookmark this link for online help https://www.cakewalk.com/Documentation?product=Cakewalk&language=3&help=ix.html
 
Side note:
There's a comment in the help about .bun files that may shed light on why people often have issues with them. Bundle files are designed to store midi and audio data and not a lot more, so they work better when all the tracks are bounced.

I use Bounce to clips for combining multiple audio clips in a track into one, combing multiple midi clips into one, permanently applying a slip edit (eg. a slip edited clip to start at zero, to permanently render a stretched clip that I've used audio snap on to take advantage of the high quality offline algorithms, Process clip effects (audio or midi) that have been inserted in clips. That's my off the top of my head list. 😄

Interesting. I do midi only, but use soft synths, so maybe my clips are audio? Anyway, when I import an old project in to CbB, some of the activity is not visible in the clips pane. So I use the Bounce feature, which makes them visible. Not sure it would have any further use for me, but it sure helps with my imports.

Thanks soens for the links and other info.

Soft synths will only produce audio clips when they are frozen. You can freeze them then bounce them for permanent audio clips. Once this is done you can actually remove the soft synth without affecting the audio clip it produced.
 
Once frozen you can remove the soft synth and even delete the whole track from the project while still retaining the audio file in the Audio folder. The file can also be dragged into it's own track unaffected by any soft synths.

A clip is a "window" into the underlying audio file, so bouncing also has a benefit of creating another audio file based on that viewable window. It helps to tidy up CPU load if you have slip-editted clips all over in a project.

Bouncing MIDI clips is somewhat different from bouncing audio: MIDI clips are basically “containers” whose boundaries contain all the MIDI events that are recorded in one pass. If you record a few notes, stop the transport, then record a few more notes, you’ll have two separate MIDI clips. You can then select both clips, and “bounce to clips” to combine the two clips into one. If you record multiple takes over the course of an entire project, you can wind up with dozens of clips on one track, which can be visually confusing, depending on your view settings (clip boundaries on/off, etc.). Also if you have lot of controller data as I frequently do, small clips can be hidden behind larger ones, data appears to be missing when it’s not, etc. For this reason, I often bounce midi clips to clean up the view. One caution: where clips overlap, bouncing can have unwanted effects on controller data, so use caution and be prepared to undo. HTH

What the docs don't cover, is bouncing a clip to itself - i.e. just selecting one clip on its own and doing "Bounce to clips".
 
This is the workaround for many of the clip processing bugs / wierd behaviour that have been reported over the years.
 
Mettelus is correct in saying that bouncing to clips creates a new audio file, but it also has the effect of "cleaning" up the internal window pointers that seem to get messed up after editing or processing.
 

soens
Soft synths will only produce audio clips when they are frozen. You can freeze them then bounce them for permanent audio clips. Once this is done you can actually remove the soft synth without affecting the audio clip it produced.

That might be helpful when a piece is done. but if you want to revise later on, you would have to insert and route the synth again. Which would be a bear for orchestral music. So I leave them as they are.
Another benefit to converting to audio of course is that you can apply FX directly to each inst. But that creates huge CPU issues, so again in orch. music is to be avoided, unless you have a ridiculous system.