Pro Tools Mastering and Down Converting Tutorial (Part 1)
After getting your mix just right, it’s nice and tight and heavy in all the right areas, all that good stuff. Now you can hit bounce to disk and take the bounced file and distribute it, Right? Hold On! One of the most commonly overlooked parts of the mixing process is the down converting and exporting of your mix to 2 tracks. Follow these steps and it will help your final track maintain the desired quality.
- The first thing we should do after completing the mix, is save the session. After it is saved, create a new stereo track and label it “Internal Bounce”.
- Now open your I/O Setup Window under Setup>I/O… Then click the Bus tab at the top on the right.
- Find an unused stereo bus (for example Bus 15-16) and double click the text field and rename it “Internal Bounce” and then hit OK.
- Now set the input of the “Internal Bounce” Track to the “Internal Bounce” Bus we just created.
- Now rout every channel that has its output set to your stereo bus “Analog 1-2 (Stereo)” to the newly created “Internal Bounce” Bus.
- Record Enable the “Internal Bounce” Track.
- Hit Play+Record, and your tracks will be summed together onto that track, creating an internal stereo bounce of your master mix.
- Select the region that was just created on the Internal Bounce Track and go up to File>Bounce to…>Disk… (or hit Command+Option+B) to open the Bounce Dialogue Window.
- Select “Multiple Mono” from the Format drop down box. Leave bit depth and sample rate at the same values as your session (if it was 24 bit and 44.1kHz, do that, if it was 24 bit and 48kHz, do that).
- Then click “Bounce”. Then name it something you will remember and save it to your Audio Files Folder of your master mix session.
