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How are people using the term wrong? Just curious. I have to supply stems of my music all the time for post houses - either every single instrument/part exported individually, or sometimes a few things ganged together. But I live in a bubble--is "stems" being used differently in the non-pro world now?
@MultiScaleMale has it right. Here's another useful description: Multitracks vs audio stems: when to use them, how to export them - RouteNote Blog
Depending on your meaning, which could be interpreted a few ways; This is the incorrect usage. That is not a stem, it is a multitrack file.
No, actually it's not a multitrack file, it's just a batch of stereo audio files, either WAV or AIFF, one for each track from the multitrack project (or as I say sometimes you may gang a few things up, bouncing multiple tracks into one stereo file, like "drums and bass stem" or what-have-you). That's how post houses for TV, etc want to receive stuff, and in that biz we call them stems (or sometimes, but less common, "splits"). When I send a track for a tv commercial for example, I always send a full mix with mastering, and then all the stems as described, also with an unmastered full mix that represents the sum of the stems.
But in post production mix houses for tv and film and the like, they still call everything "stems". For example, 99.9% of the time I send a "drums stem" - a stereo mixdown of the whole kit. But even if I did break the entire kit out and bounce down a stereo file for each piece, they'd still call them "stems". You'd have "hi hat stem", "kick stem" and so on. That's just how the term is used in that industry at that stage of production. All just depends on how much flexibility you want to provide the mix engineer. Usually they want as few stems as possible, but sometimes there's elements in a track that could cause issues at the final mix stage with how it works VO, sound design, etc, and they need to be able to adjust it.
I get that that's your experience, but on a technical level from the origins of the term it is an incorrect usage and one that just happens to be a pet peeve of mine, which is why I mentioned it in the first place. This new tool in Logic appears to be trying to use the term stems correctly and hopefully that promotes less use of it incorrectly. It won't, but I can still dream
Heck, I'm just glad they don't ask me for AAFs!!!I get that that's your experience, but on a technical level from the origins of the term it is an incorrect usage and one that just happens to be a pet peeve of mine, which is why I mentioned it in the first place. This new tool in Logic appears to be trying to use the term stems correctly and hopefully that promotes less use of it incorrectly. It won't, but I can still dream
That's surprising to me given the post production work you do. My understanding is that AAFs were created for cross-platform exchange in video production. I assumed that's specifically what they would ask you for.Heck, I'm just glad they don't ask me for AAFs!!!
To clarify I'm not a post mixer, I work solely in Logic composing for picture and send stuff to editors and post mixers all the time. True, AAFs were created just for this world, but with Logic they almost always have issues, especially when importing them INTO Logic. Many (most?) composers use Logic these days and we rarely ever deal with AAFs because of how problematic they are. It's why we send "stems", because they're fool-proof. On the final post end with PT and then whatever video editing platform is being used AAFs usually work as designed, but in Logic it's just kind of broken. OMFs actually used to work better! Maybe it'll be fixed in this new version, would be about time....
