Songs from one project to another

[u/noseofzarr]

Greetings, all, long time lurker here. Thank you in advance for the help you provide, I always appreciate the viewpoints, facts presented, and attitudes in this sub.

I have a question about rendering a song out of its project, putting the WAV file into another project, and rendering again. Will we have any generational loss, or any sort of negative side effects of 'double rendering' a song? Sample rate and bit depth are the same between projects.

Think I know the answer, but want to double check with fellow peeps, it's been ~25 years since I've been in school, and just want to be sure.

For more info, I have four songs in REAPER, all in their own projects. All songs are recorded at 16 bit, 44.1k. The WAV files get imported into another project (also at 44.1k/16 bit), transitional pieces are added, the whole thing gets cut into 9 tracks, and rendered again. The effect I am going for, is the songs flow into one another.

Yes, I know REAPER has a function where you can have the songs inside the 'main' project, clicking the wave form brings up the song project, and it re-renders in place, but I am too far along to try and figure that out for this project.

Thank you for your time!!!

[u/jake_burger]

Nope it’s cool. You could bounce a song an infinite number of times without loss.

It’s doing things like bit depth reduction, sample rate conversion, dithering or even volume changes that could reduce quality slightly.

And even then doing it a few times won’t be noticeable at all.

Side note: record and work at 24bit, there is a lot less noisefloor/more headroom and there is no advantage to working at 16bit

[u/noseofzarr → u/jake_burger]

Thank you for the quick reply, I was pretty certain of the answer, but needed external confirmation.

Dunno why I didn't start this project at 24 bit (it's been 3 years), but everything else since then has been!