The use of stereo tracks

[vespiz]

Personally I do record to track rather than bounce to disk, this way my mix bus compression and master limiter get recorded and are not just monitored.

Hmm? If you have your mix bus comps and master limiters on the (very final) master that the bounce is coming off, then those are bounced along with the whole mix, right? Not just monitored through. Unless, of course, you have different routings going on...

 

[colonel kurtz]

The difference is when the system is really taxed, automation and MIDI may glitch or be ignored when using bounce to disk (that is the rumor)
Another difference is you can't dither, recording your 24 bit mix internally to another track will still be 24 bit. You can quickly export it from pt with ctrl K, and interleave it, but no dither options.

Personally I do record to track rather than bounce to disk, this way my mix bus compression and master limiter get recorded and are not just monitored.
I personally don't care about dithering as it makes such a minute difference whether you do or not, if it indeed does anything at all. Why bother.

The biggest difference you will hear (for the better) is when you are using outboard analog summing devices like the Dangerous D-Box.

just curious, but would you be down for posting a mix that was rendered in both fashions?

i'd really like to flip the phase on one, play back, and see if there's silence or not. if so, the whole argument of DAW summing having its own "sound" will be tossed out the window.

 

[ArtGarceau]

You should stick to Mono channels from guitars to drums (overheads included) unless you are recording some stereo synths or things like that.

Tell that to Bruce Swedien. He records everything (including vocals) in stereo. He uses two Royer 121s (maybe 122s) in Blumlein on a lot of things.

 

[AudioGeekZine]

Hmm? If you have your mix bus comps and master limiters on the (very final) master that the bounce is coming off, then those are bounced along with the whole mix, right? Not just monitored through. Unless, of course, you have different routings going on...

my routing is this: all tracks and submixes have their outputs set to a bus called mixdown (rather than output 1-2)
I make a master fader to control the mixdown bus.
I make a stereo audio track with the input set to Mixdown, and output set to analog 1-2.

ssl 4000 comp on the master fader as well as Massey limiter.

the audio track is record enabled and I'm listening to everything through that track while I mix.
when I'm done mixing, I hit record, let it go through the song, stop, select the new file, add fades if required and consolidate if I do, then ctrl shift K and export to the desktop.