Exporting stems with group FX

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mrsdoubtfire
Posts: 6
Joined: Thu Apr 19, 2012 9:25 pm

Exporting stems with group FX

Post by mrsdoubtfire » Mon Dec 06, 2021 3:27 pm

Hi all! :D :D :D

I have a conundrum relating to exporting Ableton projects as individual tracks using the ‘include returns and master effects’ function in the export menu.

I have noticed that when it comes to exporting groups, the individual tracks of the group render with their own fx + the group fx, as expected.

However, if I take these rendered tracks and manually re combine them to create the group again, the combined sound is markedly different to that of the original group in Ableton (you can hear new frequencies and the wave form looks different to a direct render of the original group track).

Presumably this is because the sum of the processed channels is not the same as processing the sum of the channels.

If this is the case, does anyone have advice for how to render a protect as individual stems (no groups) to share with a non Ableton user? (I want to give this person all of the individual tracks so they have maximum flexibility to tweak the arrangement the project)

(NOTE in this example, the master channel has no FX / no volume automation in case anyone was wondering if that played a part)

One (floored) idea I had for this was to:

- remove all the group fx and render all individual tracks with ‘include returns and master effects’ function in the export menu’ enabled (so at least the return fx are printed)
- share the exported tracks with my friend
- when they have finished tweaking the arrangement, they then send the tracks back and I re- group everything as per the original project and apply the group processing

However… the only problem with this approach is that when I re-apply the group processing - it will be also processing the printed return fx which is not what was happening in the original project!

Any thoughts are very welcome! 8)

Greenapples2019
Posts: 283
Joined: Wed Apr 10, 2019 6:43 pm

Re: Exporting stems with group FX

Post by Greenapples2019 » Mon Dec 06, 2021 7:42 pm

Hiya, not sure if it will solve your particular challenge, but this video may help: https://youtu.be/YrhHHh4PVUw

allandbyallo
Posts: 1
Joined: Sun Feb 06, 2022 11:58 am

Re: Exporting stems with group FX

Post by allandbyallo » Sun Feb 06, 2022 12:05 pm

@mrsdoubtfire did you ever figure this out?

I have a vocal group of 7 stems. Each of the stems is dry in the group, but I have some EQs and compressors on the group.
Knif Soma > Massive Passive > FF ProQ3 (for some prob freq subtraction stuff) > LA2A.

Regardless if the first two are redundant, I'm trying to send these stems out to my engineer and want the individual stems to have the benefit of said chain. If I do them one at a time, this would probably sum to way too much when reassembled in his DAW. No? Or is it the same thing since their individual levels remain the same?

I don't know why this is doing my head in.
:D

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