So if they give me the .OMF files it looks like X2 has an OMF File Import dialog that allows SONAR to import.  Sounds like I might lose some of the channel processing if they use plugs that I don't have on my DAW, but it sounds like it would work.  Thanks for all the input......and the humor!

Good one CJ. OP, different studios use stems very differently. On the one extreme, you might have a stem of "all vocals / no band" and another stem for "band but no vocals". (Sometimes called a 'TV mix' for karaoke style use on live TV.) Sometimes it is (as described above), guitars / keyboards / drums / bass / vocals. On the other extreme, some studios do stems for vocals - vocal reverb stem - b-vox - bvox reverb stem - guitars dry stem - guitar FX stem (you get the point) and on and on. Can be as simple or complex as needed. PS, some love them, but some mixers hate stems because the impact to master buss type compression is quite different with just one "section of the band" passing through it vs. the entire mix. YMMV.

Stems are just tracks, its film/TV talk rather than music "tracks" talk.

As far as OMF's are concerned be very careful as they break very easily.

Dont try and export OMF's larger than 10-15 mins.

Also different DAWS have different OMF export/import settings and trial and error is a key here.....

The last feature I worked on was DAW hell....Trying to get OMFs from Final Cut Pro on a Mac into Sonar and back out again into Digital Performer on a Mac was quite a headache.....

I worked across the net recently with a guy using Pro Tools.... I sent him a standard wave mix, he loaded it into PT and recorded the vocal track. He exported the vocal track as a wave and sent it back. I loaded it up and mixed it...everything worked flawlessly. We never discussed formatting. 

My understanding of stems is that they are simply tracks in your project. As Mark said ^^^ in post #13... just film and TV speak for what we call tracks. They can be mixed down in any manner. Dropping the vocals from a tune, dropping the drums and bass.... all for the purpose of keeping the same song playing under a scene (underscore) with perhaps less energy and drive as dialog happens on screen....maybe just the piano stem would play, then the entire song comes back as the scene changes..... 



I think CJ's definition was the most accurate one.... all other things aside. 

there the remains from the sativa  a piece left over .from the,, what i like to call the [cronic bluebonic]
they come im many sizes and have a bitter taste when sucked on.
its only use is to make hemp or a nice earl grey tea.
beats are not the only thing we farm around here.
not that i have ever had  any of these stems personaly.

A stem can be anything. But basically, its a group of tracks that are bounced into one track and in most cases that track is a stereo track.

You can have Stems for all your drums, vocals, guitars, strings, and any other instrument group. This is the most popular way and those stems can be used for mixing and/or mastering, You can get creative with sterms as your imagination goes.

I do not like to use stems for mixing or mastering. Because you lose control over the individual instruments when its in a stem.

Cj

As i said before, it depends in what environment.

Stems are film / TV talk......

To mix a feature or a TV show in terms of dubbing mixing are completely different to music / composition talk.

When you deliver score in stems to a dubbing mixer then usually that will be in LTRT stems.

CJaysMusic


A stem can be anything. But basically, its a group of tracks that are bounced into one track and in most cases that track is a stereo track.

You can have Stems for all your drums, vocals, guitars, strings, and any other instrument group. This is the most popular way and those stems can be used for mixing and/or mastering, You can get creative with sterms as your imagination goes.

I do not like to use stems for mixing or mastering. Because you lose control over the individual instruments when its in a stem.

Cj

Stems are used in music and film. 

For international films, you want music/effects/dialogue separate in delivery, so you can dub in foreign languages.

For music remixes, you might get the beds broken out in stems (bass, drums, guitars, fx) and lead elements separate (vocals, lead guitars or tuba, etc.).  It makes it easier to remix w/o going back to the mix.  Many times you won't have any effects printed (or maybe on a separate track(s) so the remixer can do their own thing.

The term has been expanded to include (mostly) analog mixing, esp. summing mixing.  Since analog hardware is usually limited in comparision to software, a mixer will use soft plugs on many individual instruments/tracks, bus those to stems, which are then treated w/ the hardware units in analog.  Guitar bus/stem, vocal, drums, etc.  Some engineers will do low/med/hi frequency stems so they can treat those elements of a mix, rather than traditional bus elements.

Stem is short for something branched off - think of an upside down tree.  Leaves are tracks, branches are stems (or buses), and the final mix is the trunk.  If is a general, nebulous term that everybody in a project is hopefully using the same.

@

I won't comment on stems, I think everyone else has covered it pretty well.
 
Just out of curiosity, you wouldn't happen to be attending one of the Alan Parsons MCTS sessions coming up in February, would you? Doing your own mix from the session stems for critique by Alan is one of the options being offered at that event.
 
I'm doing the one in Nashville...and I'm counting the days!
 
JTW

One complication that can arise from simply exporting your busses and calling them a stem is what do you do with your reverb/delay busses?

Do you export these individually as a "Reverb Stem" or would you incorporate their contribution into, say, the guitars or vocals stem?