How do you export your final mix?

[Navron]

Kind of came up with this question after watching a few tutorial videos by known artists. A lot of them have nothing but audio samples in their DAW. Audio for basses, leads, drums, etc.

I myself, generally have little to no actual audio content. Most of my exported tracks involve instrument tracks and the MIDI information, with maybe one or two audio tracks for vocals or chopped up samples.

So what do you personally do? Do you export tracks as audio before mixing? Export after mixing? Or do you just simply keep everything in instrument tracks and mix through that?

[the4thImpulse]

I export one audio track, the master track.

I do all my mixing and mastering in the same project now, it keeps everything cleaner for me. Some times I leave the vsts as they are other times I bounce them down, it really depends how I need to mix the particular sound or if I want to do stutter effects. I mix along the way when I make a track, there is no 'mixdown/recording/creating/sound design' stages, its all bundled together and that's how I like it!

[itroitnyah]

I've never really tried mixing by exporting parts of a track and adding them back in as audio files, just seems like a lot of work to me. So until someone tells me the benefits of doing that, I'm pretty content with simply mixing and then exporting the entire thing.

[Lavender_Harmony]

I mix in the project itself. If I run into underrun city, I'll bounce some CPU intensive tracks into the project, or just freeze them, I don't need to export anything and bring it back in, Logic is sensible like that.

[Freewave]

Only back in the day when i had a pc that could not handle an intensive workload did i import stuff to audio first and then re-import back in. It will help if your cpu cant handle all the vst's, mid's and effect going on. But with a better pc I'm to the regular method of single track export from the full project (although I re-import that unmastered file for the final mastering).

[Fimbulin]

I mix everything inside the project. I treat all my instrument tracks alike, whether they are recorded, sampled, or synthesized. One thing I've found myself doing alot of recently is setting my instrument tracks to a very low volume and mixing up, treating everything like a live recording. Sampled MIDI controlled sound vs. live sound recordings don't matter much to me, although sometimes I do make some pre-renderings of the sampled sounds so that I can expedite some direct editing techniques.

[Aurum Noble]

I tend to do both.

[XXDarkShadow79XX]

Wait, the title question is misleading. I thought you meant how you export your final mix so you can master it. Can I have some clarification on what the question means? I may have hit the wrong answer.

[Navron]

Wait, the title question is misleading. I thought you meant how you export your final mix so you can master it. Can I have some clarification on what the question means? I may have hit the wrong answer.

Think of the question as asking, "When it comes time to export your final mix to a single stereo file for mastering, is every track an audio track, or do you keep your instrument tracks?"

[XXDarkShadow79XX]

Wait, the title question is misleading. I thought you meant how you export your final mix so you can master it. Can I have some clarification on what the question means? I may have hit the wrong answer.

Think of the question as asking, "When it comes time to export your final mix to a single stereo file for mastering, is every track an audio track, or do you keep your instrument tracks?"

I'm still not sure i understand. Is the question: Do I mix as one audio track, or each individual instrument?

[ph00tbag]

I go with a little bit of both depending on how much I'm overloading my cpu. For the most part, I don't really need to get excessive with it, though. I tend to just mix instruments.

[Conduit]

Wait, the title question is misleading. I thought you meant how you export your final mix so you can master it. Can I have some clarification on what the question means? I may have hit the wrong answer.

Think of the question as asking, "When it comes time to export your final mix to a single stereo file for mastering, is every track an audio track, or do you keep your instrument tracks?"

I'm still not sure i understand. Is the question: Do I mix as one audio track, or each individual instrument?

He's asking if you mix keeping the tracks as midi, or if you bounce them to audio first.

[cplbradley]

The actual mix is done with instruments, but the master is done after the entire song is exported as a wav

[vladnuke]

It really depends on what I'm mixing. Sometimes a track will contain multiple channels, an aggregate of bass patches, and they'll all be mixed within that track already, so in that case, I find it more handy to pop that into a single wav rather than mess with each individually. Somethimes I've got a bunch of show samples/similar things on one track, in which case I again export as a single wav. But if I have only one patch on a track, then I just leave it there, because there's no point in bouncing it to audio, as in the case of Kontakt patches and stuff like that.

Of course, mastering is done by rendering out the whole song, dropping it into a new project file, and applying mastering EQ and compression. After rendering out the full, mastered WAV, I then put it into Sony Soundforge and turn it into an MP3, just because its easier to change ID3 tags there. Also because it lets me analyze the sound better.

[JSynth]

I mix in my DAW. It just a easier to do it that way.
After that, I export my final mix as an aiff, then reimport it for mastering.

The reason these known artists have audio tracks, is probably because they record their tracks with real instruments.

[JayB]

What leaves my DAW after I'm done with a song is a single 44 kHz 24 bit stereo WAV file with the complete song. The mastering happens externally, because my mastering chain causes a latency which I don't want in the arrangement.

[colortwelve]

My computer is kind of a piece of crap, so I export audio tracks. I also find it helps me focus all of my energy on composing first, leaving me to work more with production when I mix (because I also don't add loops or SFX or vocals or anything while I'm writing a track - not every track needs so much of it anyway).

[Kushy Kallous]

Well, I export many tracks due to the CPU intensive nature of most of my VSTs.
So I'll get all my recording done, then do up a 'mix bus' (compressor, multibandcomp, eqs, etc.) and export what I have.
This is sort of like a pre-mix,

I'll then take the tracks and plug them back in, mix them again/more until I can't go anymore due to unintelligibly due to lag. Then I'll repeat the process.

After the second mix, I'll plug it back in for a final 'touch-up' mix, then export all that into one file,
which I try my best to master : ( sadly, my tale of mastering is all to common around these parts.

As a rapper, I deal in vocals, so I deal in audio files EXCLUSIVELY.
Except for when I remix a beat/add a beat to a track,
Then it's the same case anyway because of my shitty computer!

[HMage]

File->Render, 32-bit float wav, no dither.

I see no reason to bounce software instruments to wavs just for final render. DAW will render them into audio internally before mixing anyway.

[Nine Volt]

I mix with the instrument tracks, then bounce out a 32-bit float, no dither, then do my mastering externally.

[JayB]

The only reason for me to export a single synth as WAV is to make reverse effects.

[GumsOfGabby]

File->Render, 32-bit float wav, no dither.

I see no reason to bounce software instruments to wavs just for final render. DAW will render them into audio internally before mixing anyway.

I had a problem with Syrtus where my bass would sound fine during DAW playback, but when I exported the whole song, the bass sounded very white noise-y and messy. When I bounced it and then exported the entire thing, it sounded fine. No idea what went on there...

[Gray Ham]

A downside to my DAW is that some instruments can't be mixed properly, so I end up doing the first option for most of my songs.