A Few Tips on Exporting vs. Bouncing
Regarding Chris’ earlier blog about recording your tracks into an aux input instead of bouncing, I am reminded of a recent client’s headache and frustrating amounts of time spent to bounce his files. Now, before transferring files from computer to computer, step back a bit and think it out. 
First, do you really need to even bounce or export? If the studio you are preparing for uses the same software you do, then just save your files under their version of software. For instance, in Pro Tools you can save as older versions by going to file –> save copy in –> and then selecting your version, sample rates, formats, etc. through a series of dropdown windows. This alone can save an hour of bounce-time.
On the other hand, if you do need each track in an audio format, try separating all the individual tracks into two groups: 1. Files to be exported and 2. Files to be bounced. If the individual track you need has RTAS effects you want to keep, you need to bounce the track. However, if there are no effects on the track, or they are audio-suite effects, you can simply 
consolidate the entire length of the track, starting from zero, and go into your regions list and choose from the arrow drop down (at the top right of the box) and choose, “export selected regions as files”. The regions to be exported need to be selected in the edit window, btw. Remember to ALWAYS re-title your consolidated exports before exporting so that you can easily retrieve them later without confusion. I generally create a separate folder, i.e., “__Track Name__ Files to Transfer” to keep the final transfers separated from the other audio files.
Remember when bouncing to preserve the bit depth and sample rate of your session, usually by choosing AIFF files, so as not to compress your tracks – or any number of related problems for that matter. I generally keep them at 48 KHz and a bit depth of 24. Bounce the track as a stereo file if there is a stereo spread (panning or stereo effect), and also, if you are not going to bounce from zero, you need to time-stamp your files so that there is no confusion as to where they need to be placed in the song. As a safe bet, you may want to go ahead and just consolidate and export all of your needed track-files just in case there is a problem with the bounced version. In this case, the engineer should be able to re-create your desired effect, usually with nicer plug-ins and results; especially is the case with reverb.
Good luck and I hope this saves someone a headache out there.
