BounceBuddy — User Manual

IntroWhat Bounce Buddy does

Bounce Buddy reads your open Logic Pro project, works out what your real stems are — tracks, stacks, folders, bus groups, multi-output instruments, Drum Machine Designer kits — and bounces each of them to its own audio file, automatically, while you get on with something else.

Instead of you soloing tracks one at a time and running Bounce dozens of times, Bounce Buddy:

• Decodes the project file directly. It reads Logic's own project data to discover every channel strip, its routing, sends, folder membership, mute state, and colour — without flapping windows or relying on what happens to be visible on screen.
• Builds a stem map. Tracks are grouped the way you actually mix: summing stacks, folder stacks, bus groups, channel groups, Logic track groups, colour groups, stereo pairs, multi-out and multi-timbral instruments, Drum Machine Designer rigs, and your own custom groups.
• Bounces each stem in isolation by driving Logic for you — soloing the right strips, handling sends and sidechains correctly, muting mix-bus limiters if you ask it to, and naming every file from your template.
• Proves the result. An optional phase-cancellation null test sums your stems and cancels them against a reference mix, so you know the stems really add up to the mix before you send them anywhere.

Start hereFirst-time setup

Five minutes, once. After this, every session is just Scan → Bounce.

1. Install. Unzip the download and drag bounceBuddy into your Applications folder, then open it from there. The app is notarized by Apple, so it opens without any Gatekeeper warnings. It always works from a duplicate of your project data — your Logic session is never touched.
2. Run the setup wizard. On first launch the app shows a single scrolling setup form (the same content later lives in Settings, ⌘,). The essentials: pick your Stems Save Folder, check the file naming template, and confirm the bounce format (WAV/AIFF, bit depth, sample rate). Every other setting has a sensible default — you can leave the rest alone.
3. Grant Accessibility permission. Bounce Buddy drives Logic's UI during a bounce, which macOS gates behind Accessibility. When you run your first scan, macOS prompts you: open System Settings ▸ Privacy & Security ▸ Accessibility, enable bounceBuddy (or drag the app in from Finder if it isn't listed), then quit the app (⌘Q) and relaunch — macOS only applies the grant to newly launched processes.
4. Allow Automation. The first scan also triggers macOS "bounceBuddy wants to control…" dialogs for Logic Pro and System Events. Click Allow on both. (Clicked Don't Allow by mistake? Re-enable them under System Settings ▸ Privacy & Security ▸ Automation ▸ bounceBuddy.)
5. Set up key commands. In the wizard's Key Commands section (later: Settings → Keys), click Import my key commands from Logic — the app reads your Logic key-command assignments so it drives Logic with your shortcuts. Two commands have no factory shortcut in Logic, so you must assign them once in Logic Pro ▸ Key Commands and set the same chord in Bounce Buddy:
   • Toggle Track Solo — suggested ⌃S
   • Toggle Solo Tracks (Channel Strips) of Selected Regions/Cells — suggested ⌥⇧⌘S
   Each row in the app has an arrow button that opens Logic's Key Commands window pre-searched to the right command — assign it there, record the same chord in Bounce Buddy, done. A third command, Toggle Track(s) On/Off, is recommended but optional (without it the app clicks the track's power button instead).
6. Optional extras. Turn on bounce-finished notifications (ntfy or Pushover, Settings → Bounce) if you want your phone to ping you when the run lands, and take the guided tour (toolbar ? ▸ Replay guided tour) for a 60-second walkthrough of the main window.

Start hereQuick Start — your first stem bounce

1. Open your project in Logic Pro and save it (⌘S). Bounce Buddy reads the saved project data, so a fresh save means a fresh picture.
2. Launch Bounce Buddy and click the big Scan button. First launch runs a short setup wizard — see First-time setup for the once-only steps (stems folder, permissions, key commands). The scan takes a few seconds to a minute on large projects — progress shows in the footer.
3. Review the stem list. Every row is one file-to-be. Tick or untick rows to include or exclude them; open the Grouping panel (right rail) to change how tracks are folded into stems — e.g. one stem per summing stack vs. one per track.
4. Check Sends & Outputs (right rail): untick FX returns you don't want printed, and choose whether mix-bus limiters/compressors are muted during the bounce.
5. Click Bounce (or press ⌘⏎). Keep your hands off Logic while it runs — Bounce Buddy is driving. Watch progress in the footer; press Esc any time to cancel safely. When it finishes, waveforms appear in each row, the verdict card shows the phase-cancel result, and the folder icon in the toolbar reveals your stems folder.

TourThe main window

Bounce Buddy uses a three-frame layout inside a single dark window.

Left frame — project info & snapshots

A summary column: project length (bars and minutes), the Range picker (see Scanning), the Output picker (shown when the project has more than one bounceable output — see Bouncing), current bounce format (WAV/AIFF, bit depth, sample rate, MP3), detected sends (FX returns and parallel buses), the mix-bus mute mode, phase-cancel verification status, and bounce notifications. Below it, Bounce Snapshots lists every bounce made this session — click one to review it.

Middle frame — the stem list

The heart of the app. A tab strip along the top holds the white STEMS pill (your main list) and one coloured pill per Version, plus a + button to create versions. Trailing toggles: Select All, Show Excluded, and a global Sidechains reveal. Below the list, tabs open the four slide-over panels: Grouping, Sends, Outputs, Sidechains.

Right rail — panel icons

A slim icon strip on the right edge mirrors those four panels; click an icon to slide its panel over the list, click again (or click away) to dismiss. Icons highlight while their panel is open.

Toolbar

Left: Cancel / Reset — during a run it reads Cancel Scan / Cancel Bounce (Esc); idle it reads Reset, which clears the scan (undoable with ⌘Z). Centre: the project name, taken from Logic. Right: a folder icon that discloses the full stems path, a ? Help button (Replay guided tour · Open user manual), and the gear for Settings (⌘,).

Live / Bounced chip

After a bounce, a status chip in the header switches between two views of the same project: Bounced (amber) shows the latest bounce snapshot with its audio loaded; click it to flip back to Live (green) — the true pre-bounce editing view with waveform lanes cleared. Click again to re-enter the snapshot. It's a toggle, so you can compare "what I bounced" against "what I'm editing" any time.

Footer

Live status text on the left — scan phases, then per-stem progress during a run: Bouncing Stem 4 of 12 · Drums (or Bouncing Version 2 of 3), with Preparing versions bounce… between passes and a ✓ Stem Bounce Complete chip when the stems pass lands. On the right: row-size and waveform-height sliders, Rescan (⇧⌘R), and the prominent amber Bounce button. Expandable Scan Log and Bounce Log panels live below for the curious.

CoreThe stem list

Each row is one stem — one audio file the bounce will produce. A row shows: a kind glyph (tinted by grouping type and Logic track colour), the name, its grouping chain (e.g. Folder › Bus › Channel Group, revealed on hover), the bounce toggle (filled = armed, hollow = skipped), the duration, and — after a bounce — file size and a waveform lane. Nested children are indented under their parent group.

Selecting and arming

• Click a row to toggle whether it bounces. ⌘-click multi-selects.
• ⌥-click and drag to paint a toggle across many rows in one sweep.
• Select All lives in the tab strip; ⌘A works too.
• Rows with a lock icon are excluded (e.g. FX returns are never stems — they're handled in Sends). Small reason pills explain why: off (the track is turned off in Logic), no output (an aux group that reaches no output), out-of-cycle (nothing audible in the current range). Fully muted or dead subtrees drop out of the default view entirely — flip Show Excluded to see them.

Row actions

• Chevron — expand/collapse a group to see or arm its children individually.
• Right-click — Promote (lift a child out of its group into a stem of its own), Rename, Delete, view sidechains inline, and a colour swatch.
• ⌘-drag — reorder rows.
• Select two or more rows and a floating Create User Group panel appears — name it and click Create Group to bounce those tracks as one combined stem.

WorkflowVersions

Versions let you keep multiple stem selections side by side — e.g. a "Full stems" pass, a "TV mix" with vocals unticked, and an "Instrumental". Each version is a pill in the tab strip with its own tint colour and its own include/exclude state.

• + in the tab strip creates a version; double-click a pill to rename it inline.
• Right-click a pill for the colour picker (swatch grid, More… for the full colour panel, Reset, plus Duplicate and Delete).
• ⌥-click a version's dot to arm or disarm it for the next bounce run — armed versions bounce in sequence, each into its own set of files.
• Hover a pill after a bounce to preview its audio with a play button.

Bounce range per version

Each version tab has a RANGE picker above its stem list: Cycle / whole project, or any Section or Marker read from your arrangement — so an "Instrumental — Chorus 2 only" version is just a version with its range set to that section. Tracks with nothing audible in the chosen range are excluded automatically.

Reviewing a bounced version

After a version bounces, its tab shows the rendered mix waveform framed in the version's tint colour, and the rows go read-only while reviewing (flip the header chip back to Live to edit again). With a version tab selected, the two footer sliders retarget: the left one scales the version waveform's amplitude (1×–8×, handy for quiet mixes), the right one its height. Click (or ⌥-click) a slider to reset it.

PanelGrouping — how tracks become stems

The Grouping panel ("Group tracks by") decides how the raw track list folds into stems. Each grouping type has a toggle and a colour swatch (click the swatch to override its tint). Turn a type on and matching tracks collapse into one stem per group; turn it off and they fall back to individual rows.

Groupings nest sensibly — a summing stack inside a folder inside a bus group resolves to the outermost enabled grouping, and you can always expand a group and promote a child to split it back out.

PanelSends

The Sends panel lists every detected send destination, split into two columns: Mix Level (returns feeding the main mix) and Nested Returns (returns living inside a folder or stack), each sub-divided into FX Returns and Parallel Buses.

• Each row has a checkbox: ticked = the send stays audible in the bounced stems; unticked = that return is muted during the bounce (dry).
• The All on master pill at the top of each column bulk-toggles it.
• The keyword settings button opens the classification rules — how the app decides what counts as a reverb, delay, or parallel bus by plugin and name.
• Disagree with a classification? Right-click any send pill or row and choose Reclassify as FX Return / Reclassify as Parallel Bus (Reset to Automatic Classification undoes it). The override is remembered per project and survives rescans.

PanelSidechains

Bounce Buddy detects every sidechain relationship in the project — which plugin on which strip listens to which feeder track — and keeps them working during isolated bounces (the feeder is kept feeding the detector even when it isn't in the stem being printed, so your pumping compressor still pumps).

The panel groups relationships by receiving track. Each pill reads <Plugin> ← <Feeder> and has two live zones: the round chip on the left toggles the sidechain for the bounce (filled in the receiver's colour = active, grey = turned off — with a small off tag; hollow = not actionable, e.g. the plug-in is bypassed in Logic), while clicking the pill body jumps to and highlights that receiver track in the stem list. The global Sidechains toggle in the tab strip reveals sidechain pills inline on the stem rows themselves.

WorkflowIn-Context Stems

Normally stems are bounced with some mix-bus plug-ins bypassed — especially non-linear plug-ins like mix-bus compression or multi-band EQs. Their purpose is to react to the stems played together, with a ‘glueing’ effect when bounced as a mix. Bypassing them produces stems that can be cleanly rearranged and remixed — the standard reason for wanting stems in the first place. The trade-off: all stems played back together lack the glue of the mix-bus compressor. So the usual process is a full-mix bounce with the glue processing for the main mix, then stems without it for the flexibility of recombining later.

In-Context Stems bounces each stem with the glue mix-bus processing on, each stem triggered by the whole mix — so every stem carries the sound it has inside the finished mix, and the stems added together recreate your processed mix. The ‘glue’ of the bass reacting to the kick, or the snare reacting to the vocal, is baked into the solo bass and snare stems.

Turning it on

Settings → Bounce → Render In-Context Stems. It is off by default — this changes what your stems are, so it is always your explicit choice. With the toggle on, every stems bounce also writes an In-Context Stems folder next to the normal stems, one (In-Context) file per stem. Your normal stems are unchanged and always rendered.

What the report means

After the bounce, Bounce Buddy tells you exactly what it could promise for this project:

• “sum exactly recreates your processed mix” — your mix-bus chain renders identically every time, so the In-Context stems recombine into your processed mix exactly.
• “bleed-free — played together they differ from your processed mix by X dB” — a plug-in on your mix bus (many tape and analog-style plug-ins) renders slightly differently every pass, even in Logic itself. Bounce Buddy detects this automatically and switches to a mode where each stem is rendered in complete isolation — no other stem’s audio can ever appear in your stem — at the cost of the recombined sum differing from the mix by about the same small amount that two bounces of that plug-in differ from each other.
• “skipped” with a reason — e.g. a mix-bus plug-in isn’t installed on this Mac. Nothing is guessed: if the chain can’t be reproduced faithfully, Bounce Buddy says so instead of writing files that sound almost right.

Requirements & notes

• Third-party mix-bus plug-ins must be installed on the Mac doing the bounce (their own code does the processing).
• Logic’s built-in plug-ins on the mix bus are handled automatically where possible; anything that can’t be reproduced exactly is named in the report.
• In-Context files are written as 24-bit WAV, matching your other stems. If a stem would clip at 24-bit, that file is kept as 32-bit float instead and the report says so.

PanelOutput chain

The Outputs panel draws your master signal path as a tree — sub-mix and master buses flowing into Stereo Out, plus any extra hardware outputs — with a card per strip listing its inserts. Stereo Out and Output 1-2 are the same channel, so they render as one card.

• Feeder counts under each card title are honest: "12 feeders", "12 feeders · 3 inactive", or "4 feeders · all inactive" — inactive meaning no regions or muted, so they bounce nothing.
• Click a card to focus it: the stem list isolates to everything routing to that output — including its excluded/inactive feeders, revealed (still locked) so you can see why a bus is quiet. Click the same card again to clear the focus.
• Cards are tinted by their dominant content colour; the current bounce target wears an amber border, a speaker glyph, and a Bounce Output badge. Outputs with no hardware assigned appear greyed.
• Per-insert bypass toggles let you disable specific master-chain plugins for the bounce (e.g. print stems without the loudness limiter but keep the glue compressor).
• Mix-bus mute mode (also in Settings → Advanced) automates the common cases: OFF (print through everything), Limiters, or Limiters and Compressors — dynamics on the mix bus are muted while stems print, then restored.
• Restore Initial State per strip and a global Re-initialize put everything back the way Logic had it. With "Restore initial plugin state after bounce" on (default), this happens automatically.
• Room-correction and headphone-simulation plugins (Sonarworks, ARC, Dirac, Waves Nx…) can be auto-bypassed via Settings → Bounce so they never end up printed into your stems.

Extra hardware outputs as stems

If tracks route to a hardware output other than the master (say an output you've named "OTHER"), that output appears in the stem list as its own bounceable bus-group row, with its feeders nested beneath it — so audio leaving through side outputs is never silently missing from a stems delivery.

ProcessScanning

A scan reads the project and builds the stem map. The footer narrates the phases: Scanning Logic project… → Analysing sub-groups… → Scanning mix bus plugins… → Scanning aux inserts…

• Scan (splash screen) runs the first scan; Rescan (⇧⌘R) refreshes after you change the project. Settings → Bounce can auto-save the Logic project before each rescan so the data is always current.
• The scan is driven by the project file itself, not by walking Logic's windows — so it doesn't care whether folders are open, tracks are hidden, or the mixer is scrolled. Hidden and muted tracks are detected and handled correctly.
• Results are cached: reopening the same project restores instantly, and live mute changes in Logic still surface.
• Scan range option: "Only tracks with regions in the cycle" limits the list to what actually plays inside your cycle locators. Independently, tracks with nothing audible in the active range are soft-excluded with an "out-of-cycle" reason — a version whose range does overlap them pulls them back in automatically.
• The left frame's Range picker offers Cycle, Full project, and every Section and Marker from your arrangement. It follows Logic automatically: cycle off → Full project, cycle on → Cycle (your manual choice stands until the next scan). Picking Cycle while Logic's cycle is switched off honours the parked locators — the bounce uses that range even though Logic wouldn't.
• A small refresh icon in the Stem Info box re-reads the cycle position and project duration from Logic without a full rescan.

ProcessBouncing

Click Bounce and Bounce Buddy takes the wheel: for each armed stem it isolates the right strips (solo/mute via the project's real routing), configures Logic's bounce dialog (range, format, normalisation), renders the file, and moves on. Sends, sidechains, and mix-bus mutes are applied per your panel choices and restored afterwards.

While it runs

• Don't touch Logic. The app is clicking and typing into it; interference is the #1 cause of a failed pass.
• The footer shows Bouncing <stem name> with overall progress; the Bounce Log has the play-by-play.
• Cancel any time with Esc or the Cancel Bounce button — the app finishes tearing down safely and restores Logic's state (solos, mutes, plugin bypasses) before stopping.

Wet / dry modes (Settings → Bounce)

Choosing the bounce output

Each bounce captures ONE output — almost always Stereo Out. If your project has more than one bounceable output, an Output picker appears in the left frame (also in Settings → Bounce → Output / Thru), with entries like Stereo Out (Output 1-2). Picking a different output automatically deselects rows that don't route there; switching back to Stereo Out re-selects everything. The choice is remembered per project.

Range & length

• Entire project (ignore cycle) — bounce full song length; off = bounce the cycle locators.
• End each stem at its last region — trims trailing silence per stem (with the audio-tail option to keep reverb/delay tails).
• Marker/section-based ranges are set via the cycle in Logic; Bounce Buddy drives the bounce dialog's start/end for you.

After the bounce — review mode

The window switches to review: bounced stems get a Bounced pill, waveform lanes, and file sizes; Show Excluded becomes a bounced/non-bounced filter; the Outputs panel goes read-only until you restore or rescan. A result card summarises the run ("Stems bounced: N · Versions bounced: M") and the footer message links straight to the destination folders. Use the header's Bounced / Live chip to flip between the snapshot and the editable pre-bounce view. A bounce archive option zips the run's files into your bounce folder for easy sharing.

TrustPhase-cancel verification

With "Verify stems by phase-cancellation" on (Settings → Bounce), Bounce Buddy sums your freshly bounced stems, flips the polarity, and plays the result against a reference mix. If the stems truly reconstruct the mix, they cancel to (near) silence.

The verdict card floats over the stem list, leading with a match percentage (the residual peak in dBFS sits in the details line) and a tier:

The dB thresholds are tunable in Settings ("'Verified' at/below", "'Render variation ✓' at/below"). A separate always-on full-mix safety guard also watches every run: if two or more stems come out sample-identical, a solo failed somewhere and the app warns you loudly rather than letting duplicate full-mix files slip through.

ReviewPlayer, snapshots & offline browsing

In-window player

Once audio exists, waveform lanes appear in the rows and a transport bar offers play/pause (Space), return-to-start (⏎), a scrub slider, and a volume popover. ⌘+vertical-scroll zooms the waveforms; ⌘+horizontal-scroll (or plain horizontal scroll when zoomed) pans. A Strip Silence popover (threshold, minimum silence, pre-attack, post-release, zero-crossing search) tightens files after the fact.

Stem Player & Snapshots windows

Stem Player (⇧⌘P) is a dedicated playback window. Bounce Snapshots (⇧⌘B) lists every timestamped bounce from the session — click one to freeze the main window on that pass and audition it. While a snapshot is shown, a Phase Null Check pill displays the verdict that bounce earned when it ran, so you can tell your passes apart later.

Offline mode — .bouncebuddy files

Every bounce can be saved as a .bouncebuddy package. Without Logic running, launch Bounce Buddy and click Load to browse a past session read-only: full stem list, groupings, waveforms, playback. Rescan and Bounce stay disabled until Logic and the project are back.

ReferenceSettings reference

Open with the gear or ⌘,. Four amber pill tabs; the same content appears as a single scrolling wizard on first launch.

Files

Bounce

Advanced

Keys

Import my key commands from Logic reads your Logic key-command set so the app drives Logic with your shortcuts. Each action row has a shortcut recorder, a Reveal in Logic button (opens Logic's Key Commands window pre-searched to that command), a reset-to-default, and the default binding for reference. A Fallback Shortcuts group lists read-only commands the app reaches through the UI instead.

ReferenceLicense & trial

Bounce Buddy starts as a fully featured 14-day trial. A slim banner at the top of the window shows "Trial — N days left" with a Buy button; dismiss it with the ✕. When the trial ends, a paywall takes over: Buy bounceBuddy opens the checkout in your browser, or paste a license key you already own under "Already bought it?" and click Activate.

• Activation is by license key (delivered by email after purchase). Activation needs an internet connection; after that the app re-validates quietly at most every few days and tolerates being offline for up to 14 days.
• Settings → Advanced → License shows your status — "Licensed on this Mac · ••••-XXXXXXXX" — and a Deactivate this Mac button, which frees one of your license's Mac activations so you can activate on another machine.
• Beta builds run fully unlocked with no trial — a "Beta build — expires in N days" banner shows the hard expiry instead. After expiry, ask for a fresh beta build or activate a license key.
• Manage your purchase and receipts through the account portal on the Bounce Buddy website (magic-link email sign-in).

ReferenceKeyboard shortcuts

HelpTroubleshooting