Exporting stems and mix-buss compression – A workaround

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Some mixing engineers like to have compression or even limiting on their mix-buss. This is fine unless you want to export your mix into stems, especially when you decided for stem-mastering of your song. (If you don’t know what stem mastering is, please read this first.)

The problem is as follows:

Let’s say you have your mixdown (brown) split into two stems, a so-called TV-stem (without vocals, here: blue), and all the vocals (yellowish).

When your mixing engineer exports these two stems (blue, yellow), your mix-buss compressor (or limiter) behaves differently than during mixdown (where it is fed by the whole mix), because some tracks are muted. You see that in the vocal stem, there are parts of the song with no vocals at all, meaning that the compressor is not going to get triggered (surely not in the way as it is triggered by the brown mixdown), when you’re exporting the vocal stem. And since the idea of stems is that they sum up to the original mix, this is not going to happen here as long as there’s a compressor (or limiter) on the mix-buss.

As a consequence, there are two options in this scenario:

  1. Using no mix-buss compression at all, or
  2. the following workaround:

Whether you have a plug-in (virtual) or real analog outboard compressor (it’s up to you …), the key thing is that it should have an external sidechain! (There are even limiter plug-ins that do, I won’t tell which, so try to find some on your own …) So that when you’re exporting stems, the compressor is triggered by the whole mix (i.e. you have to route the mixdown file to the compressors external sidechain) – even when you’re only exporting the vocal stem, for example. The compressor “reacts” only to the sidechain signal, but processes the stem you want it to process. This  is the closest you can get to ensure that all your stems sum up to your mixdown after you exported all of them correctly. All’s well for mastering, then!

Hope this workaround is helpful! More tips coming soon …

Why you should care about mastering before your mix is done

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Mastering is the last stage before your music is being published. During mastering, the sound of your production is enhanced. And it’s the last chance to correct flaws and weaknesses of your song’s mix. As a musician producing your own music, there are some mistakes you can make that lower your chances of getting really pro-level results. Therefore, you should think about mastering before you’re finished the mix, and I’m going to tell you why. I hope my following advice is useful and worth reading on.

1. Make sure your mixing engineer does the mixdown of your song in the highest possible resolution. This is usually the resolution he or she is mixing with. If you haven’t chosen a higher bitrate than 44.1 kHz before recording (personally, I prefer 88.2 or 96 kHz), it’s OK to mixdown in 44.1 kHz, but if you’ve already decided to work with a higher resolution, stick to that. Moreover, your mix should have a dynamic range of 24 bits.
2. Usually, you can ask your mixing engineer for a revision of your mix. Make sure you contact your mastering engineer (ME) before the revision. Your ME, who by the way adds a fresh perspective to your project, will tell you about the strengths and weaknesses of your mix. He or she will tell you which problems could be easier dealt with in the mix than in mastering.
3. Ask your mixing engineer not to loudness-maximize your song. There is no reason to (over-)compress your mix – except if there’s some sonic or musical reason. Your mixing engineer will probably prepare the song in a loud, mastered-like version, enabling you to compare it with professional and commercial mixes. But kindly ask him or her to remove this mix-buss compression, or ask for 2 versions of the mix: the “optimized”, “loud”, “mastered” one, and the “pure” one.

There’s another possible way to get the most out of your mix during mastering. It’s called stem mastering. Your mixing engineer will know what this means, but I’ll explain anyway. You will not only get the mixdown of your song as an audio file, but also its major parts. The most basic stems are: a) vocals and b) the rest of the mix without vocals. Of course, you could split the mix into more parts (e.g. lead vocals, backing vocals, bass, drums, all other instruments – so here we’ve got 5 stems), but we won’t go any deeper for now. Let’s assume there are only 2 stems: vocals and the rest. Now, if you’re mixing engineer has done the job properly, these 2 stems together exactly sum up to the overall mixdown, so that: Stem 1 + Stem 2 = the mix! (See the thumbnail image: vocals = yellow, rest = blue, whole mix = brown.)

So if your mastering engineer offers you the possibility of stem mastering, it’s worth thinking about this possibility. If you eventually decide to go down that road,

4. ask your mixing engineer to export stems in addition to the overall mix. Your mastering engineer will tell you which, or how many stems, he or she needs. In any case, this makes problem-solving during mastering a lot easier, and hopefully, you will get the best results for your song! ‘Cause in the end, that’s what it’s all about.

Cheers, T.

(Update: You can find more about stem mastering in this post.)

The Power of Konnakol (6): Practising five-note groups

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In part 6 of my series on Konnakol, we’re going to practise five-note groups on several subdivision levels.
This includes polyrhythms like 3 over 5, or 4 over 5. Exercise #8 shows how to do it. It is not easy, so be patient.

 

topics: rhythm, konnakol, subdivisions, polyrhythms
Level: advanced
Instruments: for all instruments
Duration: approx. 9 min

 

For a list of all my video lessons go here.
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