Is it normal that Ableton can't handle 100 track stems?

[sonicpowa]

I thought that was pretty obvious. When you send your production to be mixed you bounce the stems and send them to the mixing engineer.

You are probably confusing tracks and stems.
You could have 100 tracks bounced. Or you could have 100 stems with 400 tracks grouped/premixed for example. There´s a little difference.

[taoyoyo]

Honestly, I would say that Live is not the DAW I would use for a 100 track project. (Most folk would be moving from Live to a more traditional 'mixing DAW' at this stage of the game?)

[elxsound]

I thought that was pretty obvious. When you send your production to be mixed you bounce the stems and send them to the mixing engineer.

You are probably confusing tracks and stems.
You could have 100 tracks bounced. Or you could have 100 stems with 400 tracks grouped/premixed for example. There´s a little difference.

Exactly. Stems are not tracks and tracks are not stems. When they ask for stems to be sent to a mixing engineer, they are asking for stems (not tracks). Why? Because it saves time. Instead of working with 100 plus tracks, they will work with smaller groupings (stems) of your combined tracks.

So again. Not obvious and yes there's lots of terminology that gets tossed around, but knowing the correct usage should be considered helpful for the next time someone asks you to send them the stems of your project.

[ObsoleteAcc99]

^ That's one reason why i switched to Logic. I can't load the Logic X "Helena Beat" project without it getting a error saying my computer is not fast enough though..

Hi where is that project? can't find it via spotlight. Are we talking logic X yes? Would be curious to test this myself.

Also don't have any issues with 100 audio tracks in reason. Just tested.

[LawrenceF]

Instead of working with 100 plus tracks, they will work with smaller groupings (stems) of your combined tracks.

Not really. In those cases stems are the individual track renders, not smaller groupings. Pre-mixing sections before sending it to a mix engineer would tie his or her hands a little, they'd want everything rendered and fully separated, no small groupings. If there are 100 tracks (actually being used) in the song, he should get 100 track stems or renders or whatever people choose to call them.

I mean, you wouldn't send the mix guy a stereo stem of your drums. You want - him - to mix the drums, so if there are 15 drum tracks you'd send him 15 audio files for the drums.

The terminology gets crossed up, granted, but no mix engineer wants combined tracks of anything, they want renders of all the tracks as they are.

If you send smaller premixed groupings they'll do what they can I suppose but that's not the preference.

[SODDI]

It's good. Ride it til it crashes.

[V0RT3X]

^ That's one reason why i switched to Logic. I can't load the Logic X "Helena Beat" project without it getting a error saying my computer is not fast enough though..

Hi where is that project? can't find it via spotlight. Are we talking logic X yes? Would be curious to test this myself.

Also don't have any issues with 100 audio tracks in reason. Just tested.

Library/Application Support/Logic/Logic Pro X Demosongs

[Image-Line]

Less is more, and no FL won't handle it. Your CPU will buckle. What will handle something like this is Reaper. I know. I've done this.

FL Studio will handle 100 stems no problem (see the video below). Audio Clip (Sample) playback has virtually zero CPU load. You will notice it is 4 or 5% for this whole test. Provided you have the RAM to handle the stem memory load (not hard these days with 8 GB RAM the norm), you will have no problems in FL Studio.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_dBexb0mVA

This is FL Studio 32 Bit hosting about 7 GB of 32 Bit WAV stems. How is that possible? It is using 'Keep on disk' which shifts the Audio Clips to separate memory processes (and no this isn't streaming from disk, it's streaming from memory, despite what the function is called). FL Studio 64 Bit will keep samples in the core FL64.exe application memory space.

Regards Scott

[camsr]

FL Studio will handle a lot of tracks, as long as they are 32-bit float WAV and at the same samplerate.

[Image-Line]

FL Studio will handle a lot of tracks, as long as they are 32-bit float WAV and at the same samplerate.

16 or 32 Bit WAV.

Regards Scott

[sonicpowa]

Instead of working with 100 plus tracks, they will work with smaller groupings (stems) of your combined tracks.

Not really. In those cases stems are the individual track renders, not smaller groupings. Pre-mixing sections before sending it to a mix engineer would tie his or her hands a little, they'd want everything rendered and fully separated, no small groupings. If there are 100 tracks (actually being used) in the song, he should get 100 track stems or renders or whatever people choose to call them.

I mean, you wouldn't send the mix guy a stereo stem of your drums. You want - him - to mix the drums, so if there are 15 drum tracks you'd send him 15 audio files for the drums.

The terminology gets crossed up, granted, but no mix engineer wants combined tracks of anything, they want renders of all the tracks as they are.

If you send smaller premixed groupings they'll do what they can I suppose but that's not the preference.

Stems should be called as they are: a group of tracks. I don´t know why they are suddenly called something else, it´s just confusing.

[osiris]

When I hear the word Stems, I think loops. But, LONG loops, like 8/16 bar ....

[LawrenceF]

It's mostly just semantics, the word being used.

Some products like S1 have literally named their track rendering dialog the "Stem Export" dialog, some others like Cubase call it "Batch Export". As long as the operator and user knows what the file renders are for, nobody really cares and it kinda doesn't matter. Anyone doing any such file sharing should be very clear about what they're asking for no matter what some may call it.

"Give me audio files of all the tracks in the song with no sub-mixing, no EQ, and no FX".

In S1 you'd get that done via the Stem Export dialog.

[elxsound]

Instead of working with 100 plus tracks, they will work with smaller groupings (stems) of your combined tracks.

Not really. In those cases stems are the individual track renders, not smaller groupings. Pre-mixing sections before sending it to a mix engineer would tie his or her hands a little, they'd want everything rendered and fully separated, no small groupings. If there are 100 tracks (actually being used) in the song, he should get 100 track stems or renders or whatever people choose to call them.

I mean, you wouldn't send the mix guy a stereo stem of your drums. You want - him - to mix the drums, so if there are 15 drum tracks you'd send him 15 audio files for the drums.

The terminology gets crossed up, granted, but no mix engineer wants combined tracks of anything, they want renders of all the tracks as they are.

If you send smaller premixed groupings they'll do what they can I suppose but that's not the preference.

Stems should be called as they are: a group of tracks. I don´t know why they are suddenly called something else, it´s just confusing.

@Lawrence, you're reading into it incorrectly... If they ask for stems, it's not the same thing as asking for individual tracks. If they ask for individual tracks (no stems/no sub mixes), then you send them the individual tracks. It's important to know what they're asking for.

[elxsound]

Here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stem_(audio)
and Here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stem_mixing_and_mastering

If there is anything that leads to confusion, it seems it could be from hosts like PT that have separate tracks for each channel. Providing a stem would also constitute providing a single audio file for both right and left.

You can also search for different studios for preparing projects to send to mixing and mastering engineers. There's usually a walkthrough for each detailing their preference and in some cases an explanation of what they're looking for (or even why).