Should you bounce MIDI to audio?
As a general rule, yes, add effects and mix after bouncing your midi to audio if using external midi instruments. If I'm just doing a quick balance mix to see how elements gel/work together I will often just work with the midi tracks while I fiddle the arrangement.
The benefit of bouncing to 32 bit floating point is that if there is any clipping in the track, the track can be turned down in the mastering session and can still be used. That said, best practice dictates that you should leave about 6dB of headroom in your mix for the mastering stage.
Pro Tools Quick Tip #1 - Convert MIDI to Audio track the EASY way!
With this function, you can combine MIDI parts on several lanes to a single MIDI part. This can be used to reassemble a drum part that you dissolved onto several lanes for editing, see above.
Yes, you should. Converting your MIDI to audio before mixing will help your DAW run smoothly, freeing up the CPU, and also keep things more manageable for when you start mixing.
If you're sending your track somewhere else to be mixed, you should certainly bounce the midi to audio.
But instead of recording the mix to a stereo track, Logic uses math to calculate its way to a final Stereo File. Offline Bouncing is by far faster and more efficient.
BEFORE BOUNCING
Mix-down the various levels of your track so that they are balanced and panned as you want them, leaving plenty head-room on the master channel. Ensure the project has enough "head-room" - when you listen back, the master channel should be peaking around -6db, with the fader at 0db.
But today, bouncing usually means writing the final mix of your song to a stereo audio file. It can also mean printing stems of all the instruments in your mix or exporting individual tracks for collaborative or remix projects as well.
Bouncing (or exporting) is how your DAW turns your project into files on your hard drive. The term bouncing comes from the analog era. The track count is a hard limit on tape machines. But engineers and music producers could use their consoles to mix several tracks down to one to free up more recording.
What is the point of bouncing in logic?
You can bounce tracks or regions in place, so that the resulting audio files are placed at the same position as the originals in the Tracks area. You can also bounce all tracks in place in a single operation.
Bounce MIDI to Audio in Logic Pro X (Tutorial) - YouTube
Bounce MIDI to Audio in Logic Pro X (Tutorial) - YouTube
The term "bouncing audio" originates from the era when recording was done on tape decks with a limited number of tracks. The idea of "bouncing" means that you would record on all but one track, and then mix those tracks together and move them to the last track, freeing them up for more recording.
If you have a DAW, you can. If you're in an analog studio, you'll have to render the MIDI to sound files. Most every DAW will render MIDI to your output bus, and you can mix from there.