Exporting Stems With Sidechain

Cubase
1

Hi everyone,
I’ve been scratching my head about this topic for a while now.
I’m working as a full-time composer and bouncing stems is something I need to do pretty often. Lately, I’ve updated to Cubase 11 and was really excited about the option of bouncing different stems combinations (also known as ‘Jobs’) while I’m grabbing a cup of coffee away from the studio. The problem is that most of my busses have sidechain compression enabled and they are sent to a trigger channel, and for some reason, I can’t export each buss together with the trigger channel (so the sidechain is enabled within the stem itself), but only the buss itself without the trigger channel.

I’ve read dozens of similar posts but never ran into a solution to this one, this could save me soooo much time!
Does anyone else feel this pain as well? Would love to know if I’m missing something here.

Thank you very much and have a great day :slightly_smiling_face:
Itamar

1 Like
2

I’m do a lot of stems for publishers too. As long as the trigger channel is routed to the stem buss it shouldn’t be a problem.

3

Thanks for replying Manike! The thing is - the trigger channel is routed to ‘No Bus’ in my projects (I don’t want it to be heard but only to be a trigger for different busses). How does it work for you sending it to the stem bus? Very curious.

Thanks :slight_smile:

4

You have to route it to the stem group and have it muted / fader turned down. Each stem group should have its own trigger.

5

Edit clarification: I set up a structure of busses for the stems I want, which then all route to a master channel, which routes to stereo out.

Then … to export without the master chain, I select the relevant channels and use the new Multiple Channel export. The side-chains are driven by input from the other channels, without them being included in the export.

To export stems through the master chain

  1. I solo each bus I want, route the side-chain trigger channels to “no bus”, and “save as” a version of the project
  2. I run a macro from file-explorer, to open all the projects and export through stereo out

Sorry, it’s hard to explain, but I’m happy to answer questions if this seems useful to you.

6

I think that’s not what he is asking for…

7

This is a bit confusing… I don’t understand your routing here…
I would send (Aux ) all my side chain sources to an additional bus and send these bus to side chain input of the group channel with the side chained compressor

maybe you should activate solo defeat to get used to the side chain…

8

Whoa! That actually works! Never thought I could route the trigger channel to its own stem bus while keeping it muted and at the same time keeping the trigger activated.
You saved me so much time and energy, bless you!

Now, as promised, having my coffee away from the studio!

coffee away from studio
coffee away from studio4032×3024 1.1 MB

2 Likes
9

@st10ss
@misnoma
Thanks a lot for your suggestions! Much appreciated.