Create stems

Any module that can output wav stems?

Yep, Nysthi has one:

There’s also a 64 track version.

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Awesome thank you

the VCV Recorder can do it too

How do you reckon that? It can record a stereo signal and that’s it.

it’s just the way I record stems,
I never record more than stereo at once

Ha, it almost looks like bad faith to call a stereo recording a stem. You said that tongue-in-cheek or you were serious?

I’ve definitely recorded stems with a single Recorder, just by recording them one at a time, and timing the start/stop of the recording using the sequence itself, so I know they all line up. You could use multiple Recorders, if for some reason you need precise control over the filename and maybe file format of each stem, but I imagine something like the NYSTHI module will be more convenient for most cases, especially if you have a convenient poly cable with all your stems like the poly outs from Mixmaster.

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maybe I’m too old for this,
but I got used to it when I started with pc’s some 30 years ago,
then a stereo recording was often even too much, and we had to freeze tracks and sometimes record just one track at a time.

I totaly get that, and I record to stereo only 100% of the time, may it be on vcv or hardware, but it isn’t what “stems” means though. :slightly_smiling_face:

Are you sure a stem can’t be a stereo file? If I made a stereo mix of my drums only, wouldn’t that be a “stem”? Or a stereo mix of “background vocals”? For that matter, wouldn’t a mono file of just a lead vocal be a “stem”?

That said, I may be completely wrong here!

Well there isn’t an official definition but the way I’ve seen it used, stems are indeed stereo files (most of the time) that are sums of buses. Usual case is : you have 12 drum tracks, they all go to a drum bus, its output will be one stem. Then you usually have one stem for bass, one for keys/synths etc. Obviously it is up to the composer to choose what they want to do, but the idea is that you find a way to export/bounce those groups so that, for instance, you still have some leeway at an ulterior stage, may it be mixing or more likely mastering, or re-mixing, as it often is the case with electronic music. So, to record stems, what you want is a way to record a lot of stereo pairs, all synchronized.

Once I had to do that for a quadriphonic installation and I use two Nysthi Master recorders.

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You are right. That’s what stems are. Yes, even the mono one.

Yep my understanding was that stems are individual parts of a mix as separate tracks. So most of them are usually stereo pairs, but things like vocals or bass guitar may be mono. Another factor is that when you export stems, it creates a multitrack wave file, so that would be different to a regular stereo file as it won’t play with most media players, you need to open it with software that supports multitrack files, for example a sound editor or DAW. I’ve used the poly outs from the Mindmeld mixer into Nysthi’s Polyrec to do this, then loaded it into Reaper to tidy up. Audacity also supports this for free.

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You can set the Nysthi recorder to create stereo files instead of a multitracks, check the context menu.

Ah I didn’t know that. but if you only want stereo you may as well use Nysthi’s master recorder or the VCV one.

When I used the Master Recorder, I needed two of those for quad, to have the files well synchronized I found a workaround : l would patch a single manual trigger to the rec inputs, then I would start the recording, which prompts two consecutives pop-ups asking for name and location, and those two snippets would later be found to have different lengths, but then I would stop and start again the recording (manual trigger) and the following recordings are perfectly synchronized.

Obviously a single module solution is far easier and beter overall, but it worked…

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I think you can do the same with a polyrecorder.
Send to it the 4 tracks and save in “separated, WAV stereo files”.
Should generate 2 stereo files (in sync).

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Stereo files for every connected poly. Track pair (e.g. Chans. 1-2 become 1 stereo file, 3-4 another and so on).