Bouncing and Feedback

[lo.fi.love]

I've been working on a stereo bounce mix and I came across an issue which really stumped me.

For some reason, I was getting feedback when bouncing down some tracks. I knew there wasn't a feedback loop created by the mixer, and after some trouble-shooting and Googling I finally figured out what was going on.

I found out that feedback will happen when bouncing down to a track adjacent to one of the source tracks. It doesn't matter if your connections between the deck and the mixer are all straight and OK.

It took me a couple of hours to figure this out and I finally nailed it.

Hope this helps the "newer" analog users out there!

 

[Richard King]

Yep, that's a known issue for us old geezers. If you have a three head machine and use the playback head as your source you should be able to avoid this problem. Of course, then your mixed tracks will be out of sync with the other tracks, so, just make sure you bounce all the tracks. Of course, if you only have a two head machine this option is not available to you.

 

[pianodano]

I've been working on a stereo bounce mix and I came across an issue which really stumped me.

For some reason, I was getting feedback when bouncing down some tracks. I knew there wasn't a feedback loop created by the mixer, and after some trouble-shooting and Googling I finally figured out what was going on.

I found out that feedback will happen when bouncing down to a track adjacent to one of the source tracks. It doesn't matter if your connections between the deck and the mixer are all straight and OK.

It took me a couple of hours to figure this out and I finally nailed it.

Hope this helps the "newer" analog users out there!

Yes it will. There must always be at least 1 track between bounces. As an example, if you where to bounce drums, bass and organ to a stereo bed when say the drums where on 2,3,4, bass on 5 and organ on 1, you could not bounce to 6 and 7. It must be 7 and 8. But this brings up another issue altogether with critical tracks now being on a edge track.

 

[trancedental]

I've found a way around this problem in the past by sending the bounced tracks to external outboard such as compressors (just light compression) & trying different combinations of input / output levels.

Not monitoring the bounced channel returns when recording the bounce can sometimes help.

Bouncing can work on adjacent tracks but the feedback often starts to become a problem depending on EQ & levels & probably dynamics as well.

Could be an idea for someone to putup some of those handy old style bouncedown planning sheets

 

[lo.fi.love]

Lucky for me, I also have a four-track recorder, so I mixed the stereo tracks + the click track on to that deck, and then bounced them back to my eight track.

Problem solved, but it wasn't an ideal solution.

 

[Beck]

Should have asked us.

Seriously though, good sleuthing. Sometimes it's good to figure it out... so you won't forget it. All that troubleshooting will pay off.

~Tim