Talk:Stem mixing and mastering

Stem mixing and mastering
This article was created thanks to the input and suggestion of user Wamnet. In all the discussions and bickering on audio related pages he was the only one with a cool mind to see what all of us missed. Glory to Wayne Mitzen. --Mike Sorensen 22:42, 11 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks, man. But I did find the other article on Separation (something) on Wiki... And no, I'm not Mike. Wamnet 14:15, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Stuff
This is really hard for me to explain, but I'll try.

I'm not sure about the reference to the console sub's as being stems, never really heard that term used for the smaller consoles. Maybe, it should be referred to as "... a small to mid-sized audio mixer's submasters..." with reference that "...they can be used for deriving the individual stem mixes".

I've also noticed, that there's no section, on any of the pages on Wiki concerning consoles, the differences in large format recording consoles used in the larger studios as compared to the aforementioned smaller consoles, with physically disparate modules called "submasters". Typical consoles with physical subgroups like that are usually either live consoles, where actual audio is switched to a physical module where it is summed. Compared to large format consoles, where there's 16, 24,or 32 channels of assignable routing, each able to odd/even stereo pan.

I may have missed any relevant wiki page that describes this.

Add to this the differences in various larger audio recording console architectures, one being of what in the day (old man voice) was known as "English/British" type consoles - ones with a separate "bay" with modules for the "foldback" of tape playback - and what is commonly referred to as an "in-line" console, where tape monitoring is in-line with the input modules. The main monitor mix, usually controlled via a smaller fader, can "flip" with the input modules large fader so you can begin mixing as you overdub, or at least mention, make it easier to control mic-ins and playback during overdubbing. Each input module on these in-lines can be setup to provide the tape playback for it's respective multitrack track during overdubbing.

Usually, on in-lines, there's not a physical module for each of the stereo pairs of the 16/24/32 multitrack matrix.

On larger recording consoles such as Neve's, SSL's, the submasters faders actually are used to drive gang DC control voltages to either VCA's or moving faders on the input modules, now "turned around" (my slang term) for use mixdown. The actual stem is typically created on the consoles multitrack's output matrix usually used to feed the multitrack recorder's input (which usually is a bank of switches near the top of each input module).

This is real similar to how DAW's virtual faders can be "grouped"; they then move in consort. This emulates what I'm talking about; how large format consoles do that type of "subgrouping"

In that case, a stem would be created by using the 24-track (example) assignment bus, physically re-patching it to a smaller multitrack format recorder (typically a four or eight track, maybe a DAW using stereo tracks or pair of mono tracks for each stem) and use the submaster VCA/MF controls to adjust the individual tracks volume for overall balance going to the assigned matrix; similar to how we'd bounce tracks down to a stereo pair on a multitrack.

There's usually a lot of flexibility in how one routs audio and stuff on these larger consoles. Someone really should at least start a page on it (I suk too bad at writing/typing)

Some large format recording consoles, tho, do have multiple main outs, such as those used for video post with three main busses (in addition to the 16/24/32 [can be either] multitrack input busses) called A, B, and C ( at least on some older SSL's ) used for dialog, FX, music.

This gets weird...to complicate this, 5:1 and 7:1 analog-path consoles exist, having the required panning (usually called joystick) to 5/7 main outputs. So that could be used to instead drive a smaller multitrack "thing" to capture the stems for mastering to an eventual stereo master (eh... what a confunction of words).

Then it would be up to the mastering engineer to create the 5/7:1 environment, unless one would want to again use the multitrack busses for stems of each of whatever format 57:1 is.

I recently got an email from a guy (very well known in the Grunge heyday) talking about doing 5:1 mixes and really not knowing what the standard was (emulate an environment? create an ELP-like quad concert?) and finally saying in his words, there isn't one. I do know that a few people over at the Grammy.com site, including Phil Ramone, authored a paper about some of the 5:1 issues.

So it gets really complex... sorry for the long festering of confusion. But hey fig'd I chime in. Wamnet 16:50, 13 April 2007 (UTC)


 * You have several good points, feel free to expand or make changes to this article. As far as mixing consoles are concerned there is a section on mixing consoles. It could use updating and expansion. The picture of a mixing console in that article is from 1950s. --Mike Sorensen 21:39, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Removing tag
I believe that the tag atop this article (which says more links are needed) can now be removed. There are plenty of relevant links in this article now (including quite a few I added myself); so this tag, which dates back to 2013, is probably not needed anymore.

If nobody has any objections, I will go ahead and remove the tag. Thanks. Chillowack (talk) 23:15, 2 May 2018 (UTC)