keeping your stems clean?

[gravitychapters]

This is probably "Routing 101," but I must ask. You are kind people and hopefully will not flay me.

I've been working on my mix skillz. (Why a z? I don't know.) I've got a song that's up to like 86 tracks in Ableton Live. I've started stemming stuff out to free up CPU space.

When I "print" the stems, they're running through my mix bus processing. But then, after they are stemmed out, the stems themselves are running through my mix bus processing again. Which is bad.

Is there a way to route them around the mix bus? Or do you just start a whole new song file and work with only the stems (and, presumably, no mix bus processing)?

How do you (the professionals) do it?

Thanks in advance for your input!

[vvv]

Not a pro, and not using your DAW, but I:

1. disable the mix buss processing;

2. submix the intended tracks and save (ex., "guitars stem");

3. bring the submix (the stem) back into the mix;

4. save that work as a session (ex., "guitars stem session");

5. mute or remove the original now-submixed tracks; and,

6. go on to the next.

Hope that helps.

[gravitychapters]

Thanks for the quick reply, and that makes sense for sure.

But I think I'm mis-using the word "mix." What I'm actually doing is mixing and tracking at the same time (I know, bad form, but it's my own material, so...). So, I want to use the stems and keep building tracks on top. I'm mostly only stemming to free up CPU space.

My radical idea is to make the mix bus separate from the master bus. If I create my own custom mix bus with all the processing and keep the master bus clean, I can route stems through master bus without "double-processing" it. I think? Maybe? I'm off to try that. Maybe I just revolutionized routing.

Not a pro, and not using your DAW, but I:

1. disable the mix buss processing;

2. submix the intended tracks and save (ex., "guitars stem");

3. bring the submix (the stem) back into the mix;

4. save that work as a session (ex., "guitars stem session");

5. mute or remove the original now-submixed tracks; and,

6. go on to the next.

Hope that helps.

[Recycled_Brains]

I don't understand Ableton at all, but when I print stems, I route channel output to a new channel input, record the affected audio to that new track, then disable the original track.

If you can only print through your master buss (ugh), just disable everything that is on your master buss before you bounce the tracks down, then re-import the stems, disable the original tracks, re-instate your master buss processing.

[vvv]

Yeah, not an Ableton user, either (it wasn't clear to me the "mix buss" was different than the "master buss"), but to adapt what I first posted to your last post:

1. keep the mix buss processing;

2. submix the intended tracks thru the processing and save (ex., "processed guitars stem");

3. bring the submix (the processed stem) back into the mix;

4. save that work as a session (ex., "guitars stem session");

5. mute or remove the original now-submixed tracks; and,

6. go on to the next.

Hope that helps.

[gravitychapters]

You guys are making perfect sense (and one of you has a dog in your avatar who looks IDENTICAL to mine, so that's cool), but I think I did a really bad job of asking my question.

Here's where I'm at, and I think I've solved my own problem at this point: I've printed my stems. They were printed through master bus processing, as I intended. So, all good there. I muted the original tracks that made up the stems, so all good there too.

Where I was getting hung up was when I wanted to continue working on the song but was running my stems through the master bus AGAIN, hence hearing them with double-processing. That sounded real bad.

My solution was to take all of my master-bus processing and move it to a new stereo audio track—which I'm now calling the mix bus. I'll now continue to do all of my non-stem work through this new mix bus, and I'll route my stems (which, again, were printed with all the processing) to the master bus, which now has zero plugins.

It's occurring to me just now that I could also have printed the damn stems without the master bus processing. That probably would have been a lot easier. Did I mention that routing is my achilles heel?

(btw, Apologies if I'm abusing the terms master bus and mix bus; entirely possible and/or likely that I'm not clear on their proper definitions!)

[Recycled_Brains]

You guys are making perfect sense (and one of you has a dog in your avatar who looks IDENTICAL to mine, so that's cool), but I think I did a really bad job of asking my question.

Here's where I'm at, and I think I've solved my own problem at this point: I've printed my stems. They were printed through master bus processing, as I intended. So, all good there. I muted the original tracks that made up the stems, so all good there too.

Where I was getting hung up was when I wanted to continue working on the song but was running my stems through the master bus AGAIN, hence hearing them with double-processing. That sounded real bad.

My solution was to take all of my master-bus processing and move it to a new stereo audio track—which I'm now calling the mix bus. I'll now continue to do all of my non-stem work through this new mix bus, and I'll route my stems (which, again, were printed with all the processing) to the master bus, which now has zero plugins.

It's occurring to me just now that I could also have printed the damn stems without the master bus processing. That probably would have been a lot easier. Did I mention that routing is my achilles heel?

(btw, Apologies if I'm abusing the terms master bus and mix bus; entirely possible and/or likely that I'm not clear on their proper definitions!)

That all makes sense. That's essentially what I was getting at. No need to apologize. I've been on this forum since roughly 2002 or something, and I can attribute probably 70% of my knowledge to asking questions and reading through a million posts.

Also, that's Bruce, my treeing walker coon hound. He is the best. Never hesitate to post proof of good boy dogs in any and all threads.

[losthighway]

Apologies in advance if this is redundant to an earlier point:

Why not render your stems with whatever you put on your mix bus, disabled? Then continue working your intermediate version with your mix bus mojo on, knowing that your stems are dry.

Or don't even put things on the mix bus until later in the process.

Or don't ever put things on the mix bus ever, ever.

[vvv]

I'll note that I prefer to reference from non-effected tracks, not least because effects and effect levels are going to change as the recording and mix progress.

As well, hearing back, say, the lead vocal a few times without effects means that I hear all the warts, burps and farts.

[Recycled_Brains]

I'll note that I prefer to reference from non-effected tracks, not least because effects and effect levels are going to change as the recording and mix progress.

As well, hearing back, say, the lead vocal a few times without effects means that I hear all the warts, burps and farts.

warm and farty

[A.David.MacKinnon]

Put the master bus effects on a stereo aux track and send anything that needs master bus processing there. Set the output of that track to your mains out (output 1-2 or however Ableton deals with this). Set the output of your sub-mixed/master processed stem tracks to your mains out (output 1-2 or however Ableton deal with this).
The Mix bus doesn't need to be the master output track. It can be an aux.

[drumsound]

I don't work in stems, and I don't even make a lot of groups for mixing, but if you're doing this to minimize CPU, why not make a new subgroup for the stem to go to, and rout everything to it, record it, and then disable the individual tracks?

[A.David.MacKinnon]

I don't work in stems, and I don't even make a lot of groups for mixing, but if you're doing this to minimize CPU, why not make a new subgroup for the stem to go to, and rout everything to it, record it, and then disable the individual tracks?

Or refuse mix gigs if the tracks won't fit onto your screen.

[drumsound]

I don't work in stems, and I don't even make a lot of groups for mixing, but if you're doing this to minimize CPU, why not make a new subgroup for the stem to go to, and rout everything to it, record it, and then disable the individual tracks?

Or refuse mix gigs if the tracks won't fit onto your screen.

I still use PT10 Native. I have a 48 track count limit that I have reached exactly ONCE. The funny thing is it was only the middle eight of a song. The bulk of the song had maybe 10-14 going.

[digitaldrummer]

I'm not an Ableton user either, but a quick search tells me that (at least recent versions of) Ableton has the ability to "Freeze" a track. That's what I do when I'm running out of CPU (or DSP on the UAD). If I want to make a change later, I can still unfreeze it, change it, and freeze again (or freeze something else). The latest Pro Tools (2020, but I think it was in earlier versions too) also has an ability to "commit" a track, which effectively means it renders it in place, and it gives you the option to disable the original track (in case you need it again) or really, truly commit and throw it away (that's for you tape users...).

anyway, if I was trying to save CPU in Ableton, I'd look into "freeze" and avoid the stems altogether. If your system is till choking on too many tracks, then that might be not enough RAM or a slow hard drive.

Mike