First time post! after months of lurking . .
Great forum Brad!.
"Bouncing" in ProTools LE "colors" the sound and not in a good way. (a more narrow stereo field, looser bottom end and a little harsher on the top end.)Also if you're editing a stereo mix and have crossfades, don't "consolidate" the track because that too degrades the sound. ("consolidate" in PT HD seems better).
It's better to go real time via spdif to Samplitude/wavelab/etc on another machine or to an Alesis Masterlink. But If you only have one machine..
Try this:
- Create a new seesion in PTs with two stereo tracks.
(with the mix's original sample rate and bit depth)
- Don't create a "Master Fader" just the 2 stereo tracks.
- On you're Mix track "insert" your plugins
- Route the output of your mix track to a Bus, say 1 and 2
- Set next stereo track's input to Bus 1 and 2 and it's output to hardware 1 and 2 and hit (alt+K)(option on mac) so you can monitor in play while being rec enabled.
- tweak your sound or recall the saved presets of the plugins you used in samplitude.. and when you're ready, hit record.
You will have your new files in the session's audio files folder in stereo split. (Don't process them to make them stereo interleaved)
Import these files "as is" to samplitude in stereo split along with you're samplitude bounces and compare.. they should sound closer. Saying exactly the same would be hard because each program's sound engine sounds different.
whew!, well I hope this works better.. al least it does for me . . .
cheers