▸ Guide · For artists
Preparing stems for professional mixing
A clean stem export is the difference between a mixer spending their time on creative decisions and spending it fixing your file naming. Here is the workflow we recommend before uploading a song to Mix Market.
01 / Format
Export as 24-bit WAV at the session sample rate
Always export uncompressed WAV. Use the same sample rate as your session — most commonly 44.1 kHz or 48 kHz. Never resample on export; let your mixer handle conversion if they need it.
Keep bit depth at 24-bit. 16-bit removes dynamic range you can't get back, and 32-bit float files are larger without a real-world benefit for most projects.
02 / Headroom
Leave -6 dB of headroom on every stem
Before exporting, bypass the master bus limiter and any master-bus processing. Each stem should peak no higher than around -6 dBFS. If a stem is clipping, lower the channel fader before re-exporting — never normalize the file afterwards.
Mixing engineers need that headroom to balance and process without distortion.
03 / Consolidate
Export every stem from bar 1
All stems must start at the same point — usually bar 1, beat 1 of the session — even if the track itself enters later. This way the mixer can drag every file to position 1 and they line up automatically.
In Ableton Live
Select all clips, choose File → Export Audio/Video, set Rendered Track to All Individual Tracks, and enable Render as loop only if the song length matches the loop region. Make sure Convert to Mono is unchecked unless you really want mono.
In Logic Pro
Use File → Export → All Tracks as Audio Files…. Set the range to the whole project, choose WAV / 24-bit, and tick Bypass Effect Plug-ins if you want dry stems, or leave it off if your channel processing is part of the sound.
In Pro Tools
Solo each track, choose Track → Consolidate to glue clips together starting from session 1, then bounce each track individually. Or use the Export Clips as Filescommand after consolidating.
04 / Naming
Name every file so it's obvious what it is
Stick to a single convention. A good pattern:
01_Kick.wav 02_Snare_Top.wav 03_Snare_Bottom.wav 10_Bass_DI.wav 11_Bass_Amp.wav 20_LeadVocal.wav 21_BackingVocal_L.wav 22_BackingVocal_R.wav
Prefix with a number so the files sort in a sensible order. Never name a file "Audio 4_bip.wav". The mixer should not have to solo a file to know what is on it.
05 / Deliver
Zip the folder and include a notes file
Put every stem in one folder named after the song. Add a short notes.txt with:
- Tempo (BPM) and key
- Sample rate of the session
- Reference tracks (links or artist + song)
- Anything intentional that might look like a mistake (lo-fi vocal effect, off-grid drums, etc.)
Zip the folder and upload it to your song on Mix Market. That's it — your mixer can start within minutes instead of chasing files.