sharke
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My experience with exporting stems from Sonar (grr)
Once again I find myself completely frustrated and baffled exporting stems from Sonar. I just exported stems from a 10 track project, with a view to exporting them into Mixbus. The idea was to have each stem start at measure 1 and comprise the full length of the track so that I can import them into Mixbus and all the audio will be lined up exactly how it was in Sonar.
So I started with the kick track. The kick in this project starts at measure 5. I selected the whole length of the track in the timeline starting at measure 1, selected the kick track, went to the export dialog, made sure "tracks" was selected, made sure everything was checked so that my FX on the track would be exported too, and then hit export. The resulting track was perfect - I dragged it back into Sonar to check that it lined up with my original track, and it did.
Then I did the same with the other percussion, making sure I was using exactly the same settings and exactly the same range on the timeline. Everything lined up just how it should. So I continued with the rest of the tracks - same settings and same range each time, making doubly sure it started at measure 1. I felt confident I was exporting my stems correctly, as I should.
And then I imported them into Mixbus, and to my frustration found that two of the remaining tracks had exported stems which started right at the start of their audio, without the empty space at the front enabling me to position them correctly in Mixbus. And one of the tracks had just exported complete silence. I am absolutely 100% positive that I used exactly the same settings each time and didn't change anything. I was really careful to get it right given how easy it is to fall flat on your face with Sonar's export dialog. And yet still, not what I wanted.
This isn't the first time I've had inconsistent results when exporting a series of stems either. It seems Sonar just never gets it 100% right.
JamesWindows 10, Sonar SPlat (64-bit), Intel i7-4930K, 32GB RAM, RME Babyface, AKAI MPK Mini, Roland A-800 Pro, Focusrite VRM Box, Komplete 10 Ultimate, 2012 American Telecaster!
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Anderton
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Re: My experience with exporting stems from Sonar (grr)
2017/03/18 05:06:39
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Why are you exporting them one at a time? It's easier to export all the tracks at once, and they'll save from start to finish. A couple weeks ago I did backups of all the Neo- projects by exporting all the individual tracks for each song, so that if the world comes to an end, I'll be able to import them into whatever DAW remains. I dragged them all back in to a new project just to make sure each song played back as it did when mixed. They all did. FWIW I did not use Broadcast WAV export. I won't be able to do much follow-up, I'm into Day 3 of trying to get home from Ft. Lauderdale. But I can give more detailed steps upon my return. [Edit] The SONAR Techniques column in the current issue of Sound on Sound goes into exporting in quite a bit of detail. It seemed some people have issues with the export process, so I thought it would be a good idea to get it all down in writing.
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sharke
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Re: My experience with exporting stems from Sonar (grr)
2017/03/18 05:39:45
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Anderton
Why are you exporting them one at a time? It's easier to export all the tracks at once, and they'll save from start to finish.
A couple weeks ago I did backups of all the Neo- projects by exporting all the individual tracks for each song, so that if the world comes to an end, I'll be able to import them into whatever DAW remains. I dragged them all back in to a new project just to make sure each song played back as it did when mixed. They all did. FWIW I did not use Broadcast WAV export.
I won't be able to do much follow-up, I'm into Day 3 of trying to get home from Ft. Lauderdale. But I can give more detailed steps upon my return.
[Edit] The SONAR Techniques column in the current issue of Sound on Sound goes into exporting in quite a bit of detail. It seemed some people have issues with the export process, so I thought it would be a good idea to get it all down in writing.
The only reason why I was doing them one at a time was because I wanted to make absolutely sure they were being exported properly before I started the Mixbus session, and once I'd done the first couple successfully I figured I was on a roll and might as well continue one at a time, checking them as I went. Since everything was set up, including the timeline selection, it was actually a very quick process of just selecting the track, going into the export dialog, typing in a desired name and hitting export. If there were more tracks in the project I probably would have ended up exporting them all in one go, although I don't like how you have to specify a common prefix for the filename (why can't it just allow you to skip the filename and create all names from the tracks without the prefix?).
JamesWindows 10, Sonar SPlat (64-bit), Intel i7-4930K, 32GB RAM, RME Babyface, AKAI MPK Mini, Roland A-800 Pro, Focusrite VRM Box, Komplete 10 Ultimate, 2012 American Telecaster!
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kennywtelejazz
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Re: My experience with exporting stems from Sonar (grr)
2017/03/18 06:37:01
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I happen to understand your workflow sharke ... I do a lot of single track exports myself going from SPlat into Mixbus ... I have my reasons and I will leave it at that for now .... When things get complex in SONAR I just prefer to freeze the track first before I export it  Since you have paid attention to the little details of having the Mixbus session set to what you have in SONAR , you should be good to go ... Kenny
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jpetersen
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Re: My experience with exporting stems from Sonar (grr)
2017/03/18 09:05:16
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I first bounce each track to one clip,
then extend (NOT move!) the start of each clip to the very beginning of the song,
then bounce to clip again.
I then Save As (with Copy audio files) to a new project
then go to that project's audio folder, rename the audio files to exclude the numeric suffix
...and them's my stems. All full-length, all beginning from song start.
But I like the Freeze Track idea. Must try that next time.
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soens
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Re: My experience with exporting stems from Sonar (grr)
2017/03/18 10:06:14
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You could bounce or freeze the tracks then just drag them out of Sonar... no?
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Sanderxpander
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Re: My experience with exporting stems from Sonar (grr)
2017/03/18 14:11:55
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I've never had this problem, but I always export them all in one go. Is it possible that you accidentally selected a clip and not a track, changing the timeline selection?
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sharke
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Re: My experience with exporting stems from Sonar (grr)
2017/03/18 14:48:12
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Sanderxpander
I've never had this problem, but I always export them all in one go. Is it possible that you accidentally selected a clip and not a track, changing the timeline selection?
Nope had the track selected and the timeline selected across the whole project. It's not the first time this has happened. One thing I did notice is that sometimes after the export was finished, the timeline area selected had been changed during the export process to beginning at the start of the clip being exported, so I would have to make the selection again starting at measure 1 for the next clip. And then that one would export incorrectly. So I'm wondering if there's a bug which sometimes ignores the selection during export and instead starts it at the first clip.
JamesWindows 10, Sonar SPlat (64-bit), Intel i7-4930K, 32GB RAM, RME Babyface, AKAI MPK Mini, Roland A-800 Pro, Focusrite VRM Box, Komplete 10 Ultimate, 2012 American Telecaster!
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Anderton
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Re: My experience with exporting stems from Sonar (grr)
2017/03/18 15:14:21
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sharke
Sanderxpander
I've never had this problem, but I always export them all in one go. Is it possible that you accidentally selected a clip and not a track, changing the timeline selection?
Nope had the track selected and the timeline selected across the whole project. It's not the first time this has happened. One thing I did notice is that sometimes after the export was finished, the timeline area selected had been changed during the export process to beginning at the start of the clip being exported, so I would have to make the selection again starting at measure 1 for the next clip. And then that one would export incorrectly. So I'm wondering if there's a bug which sometimes ignores the selection during export and instead starts it at the first clip.
This is why you want to do them all at once. As soon as you open the opportunity to introduce variables, the odds of variables occurring increases. @soens - yes, that works fine too.
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pwalpwal
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Re: My experience with exporting stems from Sonar (grr)
2017/03/18 15:16:02
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i'm curious as to why bounce/freeze/export produce different results, when in theory they should all be the same?
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kennywtelejazz
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Re: My experience with exporting stems from Sonar (grr)
2017/03/18 17:03:14
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☄ Helpfulby mettelus 2017/03/18 18:30:14
Craig with all due respect , It is a proven fact that you have a solid foundation when it come to music production , I will give you that ... Maybe the OP will find benefit in what you have put forth as a solution . If that's the case I'm happy for you both. The thing is , not everybody around here want's to " always do things your way" ..  Kenny
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chuckebaby
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Re: My experience with exporting stems from Sonar (grr)
2017/03/18 17:47:48
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kennywtelejazz
Craig with all due respect ,
It is a proven fact that you have a solid foundation when it come to music production , I will give you that ...
Maybe the OP will find benefit in what you have put forth as a solution . If that's the case I'm happy for you both.
The thing is , not everybody around here want's to " always do things your way" ..
Kenny
Come on now. It sounded to me like he was simply giving advise.... You know just like you did (minus the jab). Im just as interested in what you have to say as what Craig has to say. Im not sure what this "Always" is ? Just be happy and make good music . Look I used a smiley like you to make what I said not sound as harsh 
Windows 8.1 X64 Sonar Platinum x64 Custom built: Asrock z97 1150 - Intel I7 4790k - 16GB corsair DDR3 1600 - PNY SSD 220GBFocusrite Saffire 18I8 - Mackie Control
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Tom F
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Re: My experience with exporting stems from Sonar (grr)
2017/03/18 18:20:52
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never ever had such an issue in the last 10 years using sonar...
btw. i´d say that sonar has one of the best capabilities in that context and obviously one should just render all the single tracks out simultaniously in order to prevent any chaos.
...trying to be polite... quick temper...trying to be...
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Anderton
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Re: My experience with exporting stems from Sonar (grr)
2017/03/18 18:43:59
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kennywtelejazz
Craig with all due respect ,
It is a proven fact that you have a solid foundation when it come to music production , I will give you that ...
Maybe the OP will find benefit in what you have put forth as a solution . If that's the case I'm happy for you both.
The thing is , not everybody around here want's to " always do things your way" ..
Kenny
No offense taken, of course. But if someone isn't aware of something that might be getting in their way, I feel the need to recommend a potential solution. For example in the initial post, I couldn't help but wonder why he would choose to export each track individually...which is why the first thing I did was ask why he chose to do that. Because if he had a reason for doing so, then "my way" wouldn't be applicable. But since there was no indication that Sharke was familiar with the "export everything all at once" option, I thought it was important to mention. I never say "my way" is the only way, but I've logged a heckuva lot of hours on SONAR, and if "my way" is applicable and will make life easier for people, so much the better. I've also found that even seasoned SONAR users like Sharke, and certainly including myself, don't know everything and some of the missing pieces of knowledge can be quite basic. I hope everyone realizes that if I recommend something basic to some people, it doesn't mean I question their abilities or expertise. It's easy to overlook options in a program with as many nooks and crannies as SONAR.
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brundlefly
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Re: My experience with exporting stems from Sonar (grr)
2017/03/18 19:21:24
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I have to agree in general that if you're doing something repeatedly and you get a different result in one or two cases, it's more likely that you did something different in those cases than that the software randomly behaved differently with the same selections. I would also second the recommendation to do one export with source = tracks or buses to get separate files in order to reduce the number of opportunities for something to go wrong.
SONAR Platinum x64, 2x MOTU 2408/PCIe-424 (24-bit, 48kHz) Win10, I7-6700K @ 4.0GHz, 24GB DDR4, 2TB HDD, 32GB SSD Cache, GeForce GTX 750Ti, 2x 24" 16:10 IPS Monitors
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kennywtelejazz
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Re: My experience with exporting stems from Sonar (grr)
2017/03/18 21:52:43
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Anderton
kennywtelejazz
Craig with all due respect ,
It is a proven fact that you have a solid foundation when it come to music production , I will give you that ...
Maybe the OP will find benefit in what you have put forth as a solution . If that's the case I'm happy for you both.
The thing is , not everybody around here want's to " always do things your way" ..
Kenny
No offense taken, of course. But if someone isn't aware of something that might be getting in their way, I feel the need to recommend a potential solution. For example in the initial post, I couldn't help but wonder why he would choose to export each track individually...which is why the first thing I did was ask why he chose to do that. Because if he had a reason for doing so, then "my way" wouldn't be applicable. But since there was no indication that Sharke was familiar with the "export everything all at once" option, I thought it was important to mention.
I never say "my way" is the only way, but I've logged a heckuva lot of hours on SONAR, and if "my way" is applicable and will make life easier for people, so much the better. I've also found that even seasoned SONAR users like Sharke, and certainly including myself, don't know everything and some of the missing pieces of knowledge can be quite basic. I hope everyone realizes that if I recommend something basic to some people, it doesn't mean I question their abilities or expertise. It's easy to overlook options in a program with as many nooks and crannies as SONAR.
Craig , I'm very glad you chimed in . accept my apology's in advance I'm not a professional writer and I know I'm a hard read ...I wasn't looking to offend you , I'm glad you didn't take it as that ... There is nobody out there that I know of that has worked as hard as you have and given as much back to the SONAR community as you have ...I have learned a lot from you Having said that , I'm still here to dance my own dance and walk my own path ... however far off the beaten trail it may be ... I took great care in my original post to sharke by stating ... "I do a lot of single track exports myself going from SPlat into Mixbus ...I have my reasons and I will leave it at that for now ...." Since I have no Idea of what sharke's musical end game was , I didn't want to over-flood him with a bunch of info he wasn't looking for .... Anyway , why would I want to export a single or multiple tracks out of SONAR into Mixbus ? Why not keep it in SONAR the whole time ? The answer to that one is pretty simple ...I want that extra 20 % I can't seem to get out of SONAR , or every other DAW I own and have used.... Folks this is not from a lack of trying In short I do 80 % of all my music in SPlat . all the composing , playing , song construction , and arranging . Then I bring my tracks over to Mixbus usually one or two tracks at a time ... in most cases I place a SONAR modified mix in Mixbus .... What that means is the modified SONAR mix may have no drums or bass ...that gives me the freedom to still have a general song progress reference mix while I am still in Mixbus ...then I will work on my bass and drum sounds ... I love how Mixbus colors my sounds , so I may export the Mixbus modified tracks back into SONAR to be able to continue working there in that environment ... I rinse and repeat with all my guitars and synth parts ...eventually what happens is I mute the SONAR reference tracks in Mixbus Same happens in SONAR , I mute the tracks were originally done in SONAR and I keep my modified Mixbus tracks as keepers in SONAR Now I have 2 versions of my song project . a SONAR project and a Mixbus project ...from that point on the best mix wins there now you know why I didn't want to mention all this Jazz to sharke ... all the best Kenny
post edited by kennywtelejazz - 2017/03/18 22:22:04
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jackson white
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Re: My experience with exporting stems from Sonar (grr)
2017/03/18 22:28:59
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brundlefly
I have to agree in general that if you're doing something repeatedly and you get a different result in one or two cases, it's more likely that you did something different in those cases than that the software randomly behaved differently with the same selections.
With all due respect (and I truly mean that as your posts reflect way more experience and expertise than I have) if that was true, we would never see audio dropouts, speed comp crashes, take lane anomalies, PRV synch issues, etc. etc. In a deep complex program with so many "nooks and crannies" and multiple options for many many tasks, I think it might be possible for some state machine to become compromised if it happens to be exercised in some fashion that hadn't been thoroughly scripted in the test harness. The OP appears to have been working in a "less efficient" manner than might have been recommended by other users and I could imagine that something may not have lined up as expected. I've come across a few similar issues which are difficult to repeat because of the many cumulative steps required to recreate the particular house of cards that eventually collapsed. just mho.
-------------------- Some pieces of wood with wires and bits of metal stuck in them, silicon and plastic
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kennywtelejazz
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Re: My experience with exporting stems from Sonar (grr)
2017/03/19 02:16:10
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chuckebaby
kennywtelejazz
Craig with all due respect ,
It is a proven fact that you have a solid foundation when it come to music production , I will give you that ...
Maybe the OP will find benefit in what you have put forth as a solution . If that's the case I'm happy for you both.
The thing is , not everybody around here want's to " always do things your way" ..
Kenny
Come on now. It sounded to me like he was simply giving advise.... You know just like you did (minus the jab).
Im just as interested in what you have to say as what Craig has to say. Im not sure what this "Always" is ?
Just be happy and make good music .
Look I used a smiley like you to make what I said not sound as harsh
Hey Chuck , That was a real nice post ...I Wub you too.... I wanted to step in and offer the OP a quick down and dirty solution to his problem . I wasn't coming totally from the SONAR end of things at all ... The answer Craig gave was fine for that ....the thing is I have been a user of the other program for almost 4 years . I was offering my advice as per getting sharkes tracks into his secondary DAW so he can get busy .... I have no Idea if Craig uses Mixbus , or what he may think of the program. For all I know ... who knows ??????????? you get my drift ? One interesting thing I do know is that Gibson Guitars & Harrison Consoles are both based in Nashville Tennessee .... hint hint anyway the OP may have hit a temporary brick wall as evidenced from this posting http://forum.cakewalk.com/Why-is-Mixbus-32C-importing-my-mono-stems-as-stereo-tracks-m3576819.aspx Should I go over there and offer my help w a possible solution ? Nahh I won't ...I already tried here and wound up in the ring on the ropes .. I'm not gonna go over there and tell him he may be accidentally exporting his stuff out of SONAR as split Stereo Mono files and that Mixbus may be just only giving him the one side .. ooopppss did I spill the beans .... maybe I'm totally wrong in this topic .....hhhmmm probably not , but it is possible I could be .. I have no problem admitting there are many areas of guitar playing , music production , SONAR , Life and plenty of things I don't know ... How I ever got this far I'll never Know https://soundcloud.com/guitarist-kenny-wilson/song-for-my-fatherhave a good one , Kenny
post edited by kennywtelejazz - 2017/03/19 02:40:45
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Anderton
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chuckebaby
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Re: My experience with exporting stems from Sonar (grr)
2017/03/19 11:15:04
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ahhhh This place is like a family. Sometimes you get mad at someone just like you do a brother. Yesterday I unblocked someone on this forum. When I had them blocked, I would unblock one of their posts to read it and I kept seeing helpful information that I could use...LOL. So when it comes down to it.. the regulars here...we are like a big family. You can only be mad at family for so long.
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