Confused on how I should be exporting tracks

I’m exporting individual tracks from cubase so I can send them to a mixing engineer. I’m a little confused on how I should be exporting them. I got a message back from a guy trying to explain it, but it’s not making sense. I would ask him directly, but he probably won’t be on all day and I want to hurry up and star mixing things down, and since he doesn’t use cubase, maybe people that do could explain it better. I’ll quote him:

If its a stereo file, keep it panned hard left and hard right. If its a mono track, please make it centered. Then run them off accordingly. Mono track gets bused to new mono track, stereo gets bused to a stereo track panned hard left and right.

I don’t understand this at all. How do you pan a stereo track left and right? It’s one track. It has one panner. I’m not getting this. And tracks get bused to new tracks? What? I’ve just been selecting the master bus on the channel selection, but apparently, I shouldn’t be. Can someone walk me through how these tracks should be exported from Cubase? Thanks.

Use the batch export, do all the mono tracks first in mono and then all the stereo ones in stereo.

Ignore the panning.

Ok, so what is he talking about with the panning then? And why would rending off of the master bus make a stereo file mono? And what do you mean do all the mono in mono and stereo in stereo? Do I just click on the channel for each mono track and then it’ll render it in mono?

It would be much easier if you spent two weeks reading the manuals. Cubase is a VERY complex piece of kit in general although the individual parts, once understood, are not too hard to master.
Don’t read this as an RTM as I still have to go back to the manaul to remind myself of operations I only do rarely, so I’m giving honest advice and not criticism. For smooth studio operation it will still take you a couple of years of Cubase study.

Study though, for the first part at: File menu / Export / Export Audio Mixdown.
at left you should see your tracks ready to select or see what happens if you tick “Channel Batch Export”.

Take care and write down the destinations so you know where your files are going.

Sound on Sound have some excellent tutorials on this and you may find vids on YouTube which will be much clearer than us faffing you about here.

I read the entire manual before I even bought it, and I’ve used it for a couple of years now. Looking at the manual isn’t really helping. It says nothing about panning. It doesn’t explain why mixing down off of the master bus would make stereo files mono files. It says you can’t use “mono export” if you do a batch export, but there is no “mono export” option, but there is a “mono mixdown,” which it actually lets you do. Youtube wasn’t any help either from what I saw.

I thought this forum was for asking and answering questions, but apparently, you think it’s for telling people to RTFM or go to another site. I didn’t think the questions would take that much to answer if people actually knew how it worked.

Your best bet would be to ask him to explain exactly what he wants. If it’s for a mix, everything should be down the middle so he can do as he pleases. Does he know you have a mix of mono and stereo?

He got back to me and I have no idea what he’s talking about.

In regards to exporting, your not going to do that at first. You are going to open up new audio tracks to record what you already have. So for say the chello part you are going to open a new audio track, label it cello splits or some other variant.

Then you are going to make the out of your cello track that you originally have to a bus, say bus 1-2 for a stereo track.

Then the new audio track you labeled cello splits you will make the in of that track bus 1-2.

You will record enable the track and then move on to the next track and so on and so on, changing the bus to 3-4 for another stereo track. For mono you would be doing bus 5, bus 6, bus 7. Then you hit record from the beginning of the song to the end of the song. Then you export all the new files you just recorded. That way when you import everything its all lined up and ready to rock and roll.

You can ask people on the cubase site as to how to provide stems or (splits) to someone correctly that will be mixing the track for you. Someone should be able to go over the details with you very accurately.

Do you guys do ANYTHING like this? Why not just export the files? Why in the world would you have to record them to other tracks? That seems like a ridiculous process.

Geez.

I can’t say I know what he wants, but if you goal is

to have audio tracks line up

you are not using plugins and are just bouncing tracks.

you need to set the left locator to 0, and the right locator to the end of farthest right part.

If you have mono and stereo tracks he wants you to pan the stereo tracks hard right and left, and the mono tracks center, becasue presumably he will split the stereo tracks into two mono tracks. Is he on Protools?
(look up panning in the mixer section of the manual. you can set it to three kinds of control, if I remember correctly.)

The result will be generic audio files that all start at the same time, which is what it sounds like he needs, but the way he explained it reminds me of a 1988 protools session. :laughing: Okay, 1992.

Someone else will probably have more detailed info, but you’re in a hurry, hope this helps.

Edit. Okay, I looked it up, I guess if you don’t have the full Cubase 6 you dont’ have the “three stereo pan modes” P. 157

I never tell anyone to RTFM. It’s impolite. I advise them to read it if it looks like it would do any good.
Looks like my legendary telepathic powers got it wrong in this case.

We don’t actually know how it works but somehow we muddle along and do all the things that you can’t quite get the hang of the basics of after a “couple of years”. :mrgreen:

If you buy an expensive piece of software and don’t understand the basics after so long then it’s unlikely we will be able to offer you much help. It’s no good really us rewriting the manual for you from here.
Hands on is best in a case like this. You must have some friends nearby who understand these functions and as we’re having such a hard time answering you may be best served by some personal advice from a friend.

I have at times seen friends thru similar problems with other software (Logic) even though I have not seen it before but knowing the systems so any friends with good experience of another DAW would probably iron this out for you in a few minutes.

Actually if you studied the Export dialog for a bit, clicking a few boxes and maybe access the helpfile, which is sometimes different to and maybe clearer than the manual I don’t think you’ll have too much of a hard time putting things together.

Well, obviously he wants the tracks as recorded. Exporting center panned mono tracks routed via a stereo bus always takes the pan law into consideration, and can lead to different levels (worst case: digital clipping). Therefore to export mono tracks with correct (i.e. original) volume (if you don´t know much about pan laws for example), they should be routed to either a mono bus, or only one side of a stereo bus, to not have the pan law come into play during export.

To me it sounds like he knows what he´s talking about, and he probably knows why he is saying what he is saying,

It´s of course a matter of personal taste, my tip in that case would be to simply use the “bounce selection” feature. No need to worry about pan laws, pannings, fader levels, stereo / mono routings, locators, but edits are consolidated.

My yardstick is if someone knows what they are talkling about then they know how to explain it clearly to others. I think you’re being kind. I’m a bit more of a cynic.
I appreciate what you’re saying about the pan laws but as AKR has said he’s read the manual (it’s all in there) and has used the program for two years I would expect that he should know about these fundamentals.
I’m actually puzzled as to why he’s asking this on a forum because I wouldn’t. It’s far quicker and less stressful to search the net first.

Oh, I think, this is the first time on these forums, someone calls me “kind”. But then (unlike you) I do tell people to RTFM If I think that solves their problem, so probably that´s ok… :mrgreen:
Unfortunately you seem to misunderstand me. I wasn´t talking about the topic poster, but the person who provided him the information on how to export the files correctly.

Sometimes those people also tend to make things too complicated.

I think your engineer is trying to tell you how to export stems in another DAW than Cubase. Cubase has easier and more elegant ways to export individual, untreated audio files than the way he/she is describing. (Not sure I would totally trust an engineer who can’t spell cello, either…)

[note: some of these menu routines might not be correctly labelled, I’m not in front of Cubase now]

My preferred method pre-dates batch export by many years, but I still use it in preference:

1 Make a copy of the project (File>Copy Project to new folder) Don’t attempt this on the original project!!

2 Render all midi tracks as audio thus: File>Export>select the first VSTi as output, check ‘Import file into project’>Export.

3 Repeat for all VSTi tracks. The re-imported VSTi tracks will be at the bottom of the project track list.

Any external midi instruments will have to be recorded as audio into the project.

You should now have all tracks as audio tracks, but no doubt some will be made up of several parts and start at different points on the timeline.

4 Arm all tracks and record a short section of audio on all tracks, starting at a convenient point, either at 0’00" or at a bar line before the song starts.

5 Edit>Select All

6 Audio>Bounce selection. Confirm Replace files. You now have a full set of continuous audio files starting at the same point.

7 Pool>Remove Unused Audio>Empty Trash>Delete/erase.

Your project’s Audio folder should now only contain the new, bounced files. Copy this folder and send it to your engineer and tell him to do his/her worst.

If you have named your tracks properly, the files will carry the names.

[Note: Sometimes Cubase fails to delete all unwanted files: it’s worth checking that the folder only contains the files shown in the Pool.}

Job’s a good 'un, as they say around here. Don’t know what it means.

[Edited to say, this all sounds a lot more complicated than it is. I can get the tracks exported and on their way out of the studio in about 5 minutes per project, a bit more if there are a lot of midi tracks to render]

Unfortunately you seem to misunderstand me. I wasn´t talking about the topic poster, but the person who provided him the information on how to export the files correctly.

I am corrected, sorry. Due to a BUG! in “Intelligence v1.0005.0.” Must go to Worship.com and tell Maker.

hello, i’m sorry if this is a old thread but i’ve serched for hours in this forums and this was the closest to my problem, but still could not find an answer…and of course i read the manual.

my problem:

i have my project consisting of instrument tracks, stereo audio tracks, mono audio tracks.

i want to export them all separately to mix in another daw.

i go to “Export Audio Mixdown”

i choose “channel batch export” and tick all the tracks i need to export…

QUESTION IS:

WHY the mono tracks get exported as stereo tracks???

i could not find ANY answer in the manual…

i hope you can help me

all the best

OMG, can we make a technical bible that starts with this?? Doesn’t help the OP, but seriously, these are words of wisdom.

Back to your regularly-scheduled program :wink:

He’s using PT which doesn’t offline bounce so he has to record stems in realtime to new tracks, that’s the PT methtod. And yes, it is a bit ridiculous in 2012.

Just consolidate like the guy said above, or if you have lots of instruments, reset the entire mixer (get rid of all your EQ/Comp plugs and similar) and print stems. You’ll have to do it twice though because Cubase won’t (afaik) print mono and stereo stems at the same time. Or just bounce your instrument tracks and export an OMF.

Other considerations: if your instruments have FX like verb and similar (Kontakt patches, whatever), on the instrument itself, turn most of that stuff off or you might be slightly tying the mix engineer’s hands.

It will, as long as mono tracks are routed to mono busses. Just like the standard export procedure.

anyone can help me with my problem i posted above?
thanks!

No. You need to start another thread of your own with YOUR issue. It is considered incorrect to “hijack” another thread with a slightly different problem.
You wil need to study the Export dialog and the helpfiles under the “help” tab. Sometimes better than the manual.