I am very sorry to ask this question where it has probably been talked about a lot.  I looked at the last 120 days of posts in this section and also read through parts of the reference material.  

For complete clarity on this subject:
Each time I bounce a clip, does that change the wave form in any way?  
I record vocals and use EQ for monitoring (post EQ and compression).  I then may use V-Vocal to correct some pitch.  When I am done for that day, I bounce to clip.  I do not think the EQ gets bounced.  Is that correct?  
Can I bounce all day long without any degradation to the original wave form?

Thanks for your help.

Rimshot

Hi Jim, Bounce to clips only bounces clip automation or other clip editing AFAIK. To include other FX etc you need to use bounce to track and adjust settings required there.

No degradation either, that'll only happen if changing bit depths which bounce to clips doesn't, ideally bit depth change should only be done once, which is the only time you need dithering applied.

Edited for accuracy.

Thanks Karl.  I needed your answer because it seemed that my lead vocal high end was getting boosted after working on it day by day.  I thought that maybe I was bouncing the post EQ signal and then the continuing to add the same post EQ for monitoring.  This then would be doubling the EQ.  With what you have said, that would not have been possible.  

Thanks again.

Jim 

Jim I've just checked my facts and it is only clip automation and other clip edits that are applied.

I've edited my first post which may have looked like track automation was processed which it isn't. That would be important to you because if that was the case EQ could well have been included, but it definitely isn't (Unless it's there as a clip effect)

"Can I bounce all day long without any degradation to the original wave form?"

Yes!

Note: there are many kinds of bounces in Sonar, i.e.,: Clip, Fx-bin (VSTs), Synths, tracks, and exportings.

In some, the pre-fader EQs/Filters and Fx-bin plugins ... they bounce right along with them. 

(I am forced to bounce a lot of the UAD VST's to tracks for example).

In others, during the necessity of freezing synths, degradation may occur based on the 3rd party 'antics'.  EWQL synths, for example, when bounced ... may truncate a reverb tail or other vital phrase.

Off topic:

All in all however, eventual freezing and bouncing seems excellent practice, for many producers.  Older producers understand this.  As the song matures, both the synth rack and the Fx-bin becomes more and more tidy and cleared ... so more fx's and envelopes can be applied. 

But I probably erroneously leave Superior Drummer 'unbounced' ... trusting the multi-tracks comps and fx's to bounce faithfully for the pre-master.  And as many of us discover, there may be degradations in the kick and snare peaks with this drum machine.

Thanks Karl and Phillip.  Since I don't use any EQ mods in the track and I only bounce to clip, I don't think I am bouncing the EQ also.  
If I did want to keep the post EQ for the track and I select Bounce to Track, would the EQ then come with the bounce?

Rim

That would be up to you, you get to choose what is included in the "Bounce to Track" option box, along with where the bounce goes etc. That comes up automatically after selecting the option.

Be careful of pan law though. If you bounce to clips, pan law is applied based on the pan of the track. This drivers me crazy and I and various folks have complained about it over the years. But, to my knowledge, nothing has been done about it.

So if you have some track panned center, and often the track you are working on may be since you just tracked it, and you have a -3 or -6dB center pan law, that will be applied to the bounced track. It doesn't seem like it should, but I've always had it happen, to the point that I just use a 0dB center pan law to avoid figuring out later that I threw away a lot of my signal and didn't realize it until much later when it was too later to undo it.

It seems to me that bouncing down tracks to other tracks, yeh, maybe that would be reasonable, but personally I wouldn't even want it applied then. It seems to me it only makes sense when doing a final mixdown and that it therefore should be an option that you chose every time you do a bounce to tracks, and never should be done with bouncing to clips.

Am I'm missing something on this front? Do other folks experience this?

Dean, this would only happen if you have a clip with a pan inserted on the clip itself, would it not? (including having it enabled, but panned centre) If you just have a mono clip, no clip volume or pan or any other automation (clip automation, not track automation, which isn't bounced), then it shouldn't apply any pan law? I have never noticed a drop but I'm not sure if I'm set to 0dB centre or if it's a -3 or -6. I just leave it set to the default, whatever that is. In either effect, if you did have a clip with pan enabled, then you'd be hearing the pan law in action anyway, and it will change the original clip, but it will still SOUND the same. But if you had no sort of panning in the clip enabled AT ALL, then I wouldn't have expected it to apply pan law as the clip itself has none, that pan law you do hear is being applied post clip. Mmm, I don't know..

At least that's what makes sense to me.


As far as bouncing, you can change the option to bounce to 16, 24, 32 or 64 bit. If your default is not the same bit depth or it is less, then you're going to have a loss. Typically we record in 24 bit. Typically bounce is set to 32 bit. If you have made no processing on the clip, it's just going to add an extra 8 bits of zeroes to your clip. If you have the bounce default set to 16, it's going to truncate. If you have it at 24, I guess it shouldn't theoretically change. I don't understand in depth enough, but it may be possible that 1,000,000 bounces will slowly show an increase in random noise at the noise floor level which eventually becomes audible - but in reality, you're never going to hit that point. I guess it depends on the quality of the bounce engine and if it puts any sort of random noise in at the noise floor level. I'd need someone more tech savy to confirm this one..

Now, v-vocal. If you only perform correction on one little section, simply running it through v-vocal WILL cause a change in ALL audio. This is MY opinion, and not based of facts, but based on my ears. Simply enabling v-vocal, I can hear a loss in quality. Thus bouncing is going to write this down. Bitflipper made a big post once about avoiding this audible artefacts by significantly eliminating room noise and headphone bleed. A perfectly dry signal will supposedly get inaudible artefacts. I am yet to experience this, but am also yet to produce an ideal recording for proper testing. If I can't get around this, I'm going to have to by melodyne!

I never did anything specific to the clips. It was just tracking some takes, comping a couple major sections out of some of them, and then bouncing those keepers down to a single clip. That would apply the pan law and lower the level. Others have complained about this as well, so it's not just me. If you do a search you can find other threads about it.

http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.aspx?high=&m=647924

http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.aspx?high=&m=1274680

http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.aspx?high=&m=863359&mpage=1#866948

http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.aspx?m=647924&mpage=1&tree=true&settheme=Cakewalk

http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.aspx?m=1554881&mpage=1&print=true