TV Mix Stems

[dr sound]

Tom,
I have seen ads for "The Baxter" and since it is out nation wide I thought maybe you have seen it . I was interested if you were happy with what you heard.

[trakbytes]

About the session setup, I double-bus all my submasters and reverbs to my 2 mix record track and to each respective stem record track.

I use a variation of this that does not require double-bussing. The flow goes like this: Dialog tracks->Dia Bus->Dia Stem->PM. Solo-safe the Dia Bus and PM track and you can solo any individual track. Same setup for Music and FX. You could run the busses through a +12 limiter at the end of the bus chain if you need to limit your stems. I use a lot of sub-paths in the I/O bussing to route through different track formats (ie: a dialog stem for a 5.1 mix may only be an LCR track, so I set up an LCR sub-path in the 5.1 PM bus). I suppose you could argue that processing delays may build up through the chain, but I've never noticed any problem (and I've never had a mix rejected for sync issues as a result). I've done a couple hundred foreign mixes for DVD in the last couple of years with this same setup without a problem. Having a template for both I/O setup and track layout is a must!

Bob McNabb

[tikboy]

Very good information guys. Not exactly a TV show but a live production: Would you just rely on a (live) stereo broadcast mix? Say, having a multitrack or even stems is not a priority or wasn't prepared.