for more: http://www.digido.com/delivery-ftp.htmlStems or Splits - The Gang of Four
Professional mixing engineers never get caught with their pants down when they produce the Gang of Four. This is even better than Vocal Up/Vocal Down and is not any more work.
Here's the key: You produce up to four synced stems. In a time pinch, you can produce only the first two or three.
Stem #1. TV (that’s instrumental plus chorus or background vocals).
Stem #2. Lead Vocal(s) (plus its reverb of course ---basically muting everything else).
Stem #3. Full Mix (that’s what I will use unless there is a problem, and it's also a reference to prove that #1 and #2 were made correctly).
Stem #4. Instrumental (by adding this to #1 we can reduce the chorus level. By subtracting this from #1 we can increase the chorus level. By subtracting this from #3 we can increase lead and chorus. And so on!
Synchronized stems are produced by running a separate mix pass from the same starting sample each time without changing any gains. You mute the tracks that you don't want to hear. That way any reverbs or other processing which were applied on the full mix remain on the stems. Don't be afraid if the vocal-only version has 1 minute of blank at the head, that's part of the design!
In mastering, the sum of Stem #1 and Stem #2 at unity gain = Full mix. If we want lead vocal down, we just take the level of Stem #2 down a hair. And through other combinations we can control instruments or all vocals. In mastering, if a vocal is sibilant, we can apply a de-esser just to the vocal track, which is less of a compromise than de-essing the full mix. If a bass instrument needs to come up, we can equalize the instruments without making the vocal any bassier. And so on.
Many mix engineers argue (correctly) that if they are using bus compression the stems will not reflect the same sound they got on the full mix. This is true, if you are doing strong bus compression, the interaction between the peaks of the mix and the individual elements will not be the same when using stems. In that case, a legitimate gang of four cannot be produced!
The gang of four protects you and your clients in many ways. It gives you archive options and alternative options. It gives you the TV mix the client forgot to ask for but requests six months later! It allows cleaning up dirty words without dropping the music out. Develop the discipline to do the gang of four. You won't be sorry!
*This advice is intended for preparing mixes for CD mastering, but the same manipulations outlined above can also be done in audio post, (or in your home studio) and in the event of hard disk or other disaster, making a habit of archiving stems in this fashion could really save your bacon. Mmmmm....bacon.
