Ableton Forum

Searched high and low on the forums for this but didn't see any clever solutions. Hoping someone has one.

Here's what I want to do:
- Render all tracks, where each exported audio file INCLUDES returned effects.

In other words, I want to have each track exported to a file that *sounds like what I hear when I solo the track in Live. (With Solo in Place activated.)

What Live seems to do with "Render All Tracks" is export a whole bunch of dry tracks, and then exports the return tracks as separate files. This is of no earthly good, because as I work on a song, I tweak its send/return effects to taste while listening through the master channel. Naturally, when I export stems (say, all my tracks, or groups of them), I want those exports to *include the sound of the carefully tweaked effects.

There are a whole bunch of slow workarounds to this—like manually auditioning groups of tracks and recording the audio using the Resampling feature—but said workarounds are, well, SLOW. And manual. And if anything changes in an arrangement, require me to redo all of that annoying and slow work again and again.

So: Anyone have a good way of exporting stems WITH effects printed to the exported audio?

merges wrote:Searched high and low on the forums for this but didn't see any clever solutions. Hoping someone has one.

Here's what I want to do:
- Render all tracks, where each exported audio file INCLUDES returned effects.

In other words, I want to have each track exported to a file that *sounds like what I hear when I solo the track in Live. (With Solo in Place activated.)

What Live seems to do with "Render All Tracks" is export a whole bunch of dry tracks, and then exports the return tracks as separate files. This is of no earthly good, because as I work on a song, I tweak its send/return effects to taste while listening through the master channel. Naturally, when I export stems (say, all my tracks, or groups of them), I want those exports to *include the sound of the carefully tweaked effects.

There are a whole bunch of slow workarounds to this—like manually auditioning groups of tracks and recording the audio using the Resampling feature—but said workarounds are, well, SLOW. And manual. And if anything changes in an arrangement, require me to redo all of that annoying and slow work again and again.

So: Anyone have a good way of exporting stems WITH effects printed to the exported audio?

Make a bus track and bus the dry track and its returns to that bus

Nevermind that wont work

You could just go dry chain/ insert effect chain ..automate effect chain volume then freeze flatten per track


Oh fahq it....i dont know the answer

manually solo a track, bounce, solo another, bounce, that way every track will be printed with it's own amound of send fx

Re: manually soloing and bouncing—as I mentioned, that is extremely tedious and slow, and if a song changes, requires an incredible amount of manual effort to be repeated. There must be an easier way!

short answer, no, not in live (and not in any host i know of)
and honnestly i wouldn't want to do that ever for my own production, seems illogical to me

Really? It seems like the logical next step for exporting stems, especially to create clips that can be used for live performance. Why would you NOT want to print the return effects with each track? (I'm genuinely curious. If I were designing Live, I would probably have an option to include the return audio—as Live does with Solo in Place activated—upon exporting all tracks.)

Seems like the simplest way would be to duplicate your sends, assign each one to it's respective track and then bounce.

The bounce will take forever, but this would only take a minute or so to set up.

merges wrote:Really? It seems like the logical next step for exporting stems, especially to create clips that can be used for live performance. Why would you NOT want to print the return effects with each track? (I'm genuinely curious. If I were designing Live, I would probably have an option to include the return audio—as Live does with Solo in Place activated—upon exporting all tracks.)

cause when playng live, i like to apply whwtever fx i want to anything(insert and send) and having delay or verb already printed on the track is really annoying, for example(and not only) adding distortion or lo-fi on a reverbered track is awfull, wile distorting the dry track and sending to the verb is way cleaner

just a basic example of why i personally prefer my things dry and as pure as possible(also why i dont actually use pre renders live, only real actual synths)

unless of course i want to fake sample myself(like making a full disco loop and then using it as if i had lifted it) or if the fx(say a 10 second reverb tail) IS the sound i'm playing

Yea, in the example you describe I can see the case for wanting dry only. I tend to use my sends for slight enhancements—like gelling multiple elements together in one "room" by adding just a little bit of reverb—so the result is *almost but not *quite dry. I still want to be able to do exactly what you say (add more effects) but retain the enhancement.

It really should be an option... grumble.

Will try contakt's option later and see how that goes.

a return track is a track that recieves its audio input from other tracks. therefore you can't actually dissect each wet part of an individual track. it's the same idea as trying to get just the vocals from a final mix. I would say the best way to do this is create a second audio track. This will be your wet.

now group both tracks. then when you export you'll have the 2 combined. of course this loses the functionality of a return track but you can just do this as your final step after your done your whole project.

kanuck wrote:a return track is a track that recieves its audio input from other tracks. therefore you can't actually dissect each wet part of an individual track.

This is true in fact, but Live's solo (when I solo a track) *includes return effects, audibly. So, it should be possible to export that. Indeed, to combine the dry (actual track) and wet (returns) parts of a "track."

merges wrote:

kanuck wrote:a return track is a track that recieves its audio input from other tracks. therefore you can't actually dissect each wet part of an individual track.

This is true in fact, but Live's solo (when I solo a track) *includes return effects, audibly. So, it should be possible to export that. Indeed, to combine the dry (actual track) and wet (returns) parts of a "track."

this is because when you solo it you're sending ONLY that track through the return. this is the same idea as what I posted before about making a separate pseudo-return tracks for each track and grouping them. When you have multiple tracks running through a return track it's summing it together.

Yea, my assumption is that an export feature like this would simple "solo" each track upon render, including returns, rather than just dry. It might take a long time (i.e. be computationally expensive), but it would be easier than doing this manually.