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Drum tracks - Stereo vs Stems
Just curious. No need to state reasons unless you're feeling generous. I'm diehard stems, but suspect I'm in the minority. Guess I'd like to see if so and by how much 
- I prefer using:27 votes
- Stereo Track48.15%
- Stems51.85%
Comments
Whoa! Stems out to an early lead with 100% of the vote
As far as I know a drum stem is a submit of just the drums. By stereo track do you mean you just mix the entire track including the instruments and drums once into a stereo audio file?
Yeah. I could be sketchy with the jargon. Stereo drums in the mix or separate tracks for every drum voice (stem)?
Aaaand it's now a two horse race. With only two horses in the race.
I was kind of confused at first with your question, tbh
But yep... I prefer my drum parts on individual tracks. Even more so if i`ll be using Drumagog within Auria
Hmm, not sure I'm your target audience @eustressor but I go with whatever works for the track. Quite commonly have several stereo mixes of different drum tracks with the odd stem thrown in.
Nah, straight out and at em. If needs be turn em up.
Mono tracks into a stereo drumbus ....
old school:), can't get more control about what's going on
but I guess this only works if you do everything yourself - if you use loops you are stuck with that stereo file ...
but sometimes a stereo file is fine, too, lol - exept for stuff like now play this pattern without the claps ...
Yeah, thought about adding a loop voting option, then realized, well, that typically precludes stems
This is a good thread. I guess you could take it a step further and mix like the pros by having each individual drum sound on seperate tracks. Drum Perfect has 16 outputs.
I somehow thought stems and clicked Stereo... Need to subtract one Stereo and add one stems. Diehard stems guy as well. (Doesn't mean I have a clue about what I am doing or why.) I do like to have the ability to separately EQ each drum part when needed.
If the iPad had more power, I wouldn't need to bounce my drums (or anything else) down to a stereo stem. Having separate drum tracks I could easily clock up 30 tracks for a project.. And to have all those tracks using compressors, eq and fx would be nice but I think my iPad just shuddered at that prospect.!
I often have kick + snare on one track (I know they'd be better on different tracks but I need to see closely how they interact). Then Highats on another. Then a percussion kit on a track, maybe a different percussion kit on another track etc... I'm also getting into blending in breaks/loops generated in Thumbjam - kind of like very custom loops.
Stems all the way. I use Drumagog on everything so there isn't much choice anyway.
Interesting hybrid approach. I just can't get my head around Snare and Kick in the same track! Those are the two stems I tend to fiddle with the faders on the most, and once you merge them, you're locked in ...
Then again, I'm still trying to get my head around the term "bellyfeel" originating from Orwell and not the Kama Sutra
I'm curious what model iPad you have, as well as your iDAW of choice ...
@eustressor DUCKSPEAK! Goodsex is any form of sex considered acceptable by the Party.
@eustressor I was probably being misleading to be honest.
I'm talking about Gadget tracks in my case. So I can still go in and independently change the volume on the kick vs the snare. I just like to have them in the same gadget/piano roll, whereas I like to have the hats and the 'other' precision stuff elsewhere - maybe using different filter sweeps, having them come on and off easily in different parts of the track etc. At the end of the day though I can tweak the volume, pan etc on every drum at any time.
Sorry, was interpreting in terms of how I organise stuff from a Gadget tracks point of view.
@JohnnyGoodyear Goodyear, goodsex ... Talking ducks ... Dare we travel down such a road? I suppose as long as the diagram includes an AB chain.
@Matt_Fletcher_2000 ah, OK, thanks for clarifying. That's easier for my (Motor)head to grasp. Do you still keep them together when you render/copy to a DAW, or is a DAW not part of your workflow?
Only once have I needed to ever render stems to a DAW. Because I wanted a long piano part from Thumbjam before I bought module.
I keep meaning to render everything out as stems to Auria but I'm so 'exhausted' of the track (if you know what I mean) by the time I'm 'finished' that I just master the master in Master Record. I tend to spend a long time mixing the sound in Gadget as I compose and then wonder what id really add in Auria with its plugins. But I'm sure it would add value. It's just a time/energy/Auria skill thing.
But to answer your question, if I did, I'd definitely split the kick and snare for the same reasons you give.
I use Cubasis on a lil ol ipad 2.. I can only run about 12 audio tracks and a couple of midi tracks at a time before CPU starts choking. I like it tho.
On the desktop or in apps that make it easy on my iPad (like NanoStudio) I keep most drums separate on the mixer and then use one or more busses for either mixing or convenience. Generally with my iPad 3 in something like Auria I'm using a single stereo bounce. Sometimes a stereo bounce of kick and snare and a stereo bounce of everything else.
Interesting ... I use a drum subgroup in Auria much the way you describe bringing separate tracks into a dedicated buss in NanoStudio (Air 1). I'm all for "one fader" convenience for the overall levels, but I can't commit and render. I'm always tweaking that splash that happens, oh, twice.
One good use for a stereo drum mixdown I recently discovered is to add it to my individual stems to simulate a drum overhead. Just scoop out the bottom end, add some reverb and season to taste. Really gives sequenced beats some extra life.
Like @syrupcore I'll use NanoStudio as a sampler.. For my own sounds and loops I must add.
I have gotten into using stems as my new obsession is to learn how to mix better. @syrupcore How well does Auria run on a three?
It runs ok. That is, it works if not wonderfully but I've long held the belief that my particular unit has issues. I run into problems I can't explain that other 3 users don't have.
In Auria, it has more to do with system resources than it does with convenience. Though there are times where I appreciate having just committed ffs. Generally, I prefer to tweak until the last second (which, as a consequence, rarely arrives).
The bummer with Nanostudio is that it doesn't have secondary bussing. So you can have up to three mixer channels per TRG instance but once they're at the mixer, they go straight to the main outs. Hopefully NS2 will have proper audio bussing. Of course, you can use the volume/pan controls per pad and use the TRG bus outputs as they were intended but it's very nice to be able to adjust levels (and effects and automation) per track on the mixer itself.
You might try adding a tiny bit (10-40ms) of 100%-wet delay to the secondary drum bus to simulate room mics. If you have the transient shaper plugin, you could try to mush them up a bit before feeding your effects chain.
It's interesting to me that people on this thread are using Auria to create drum stems because it doesn't have MIDI.
@eustressor While I'm firmly Stems in theory I have found that often I'm setting myself up to fix something that isn't broken: many times when the drums are right, they're Right (as a stereo composite).
Possibly most relevant to the initial question though: many apps I have sound night and day different when playing back as a whole / reacting to the native processing as opposed to the isolated stems. Recreating that pump (or whatever inherent character) via Stems afterwards is a hit-and-miss game that often ends as Less than the original quick-fire beats.
I voted 'Stems' but the more confident I get with my monitoring, ears, and sense of relativity when constructing tracks the more I end up using the drums stereo master.
I should add it means people are using the drum machine's pattern sequencer t