How to Export Stems in FL Studio

Stems are simply audio files of each individual track or bus in your DAW. Exporting stems to audio can be helpful when sending your project to a professional mixing or mastering engineer. In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to export stems in FL Studio. Let’s get started!

Step 1: Proper Mixing

In order for you to successfully export stems in FL Studio, you’ll need to make sure you’ve properly routed the signals in your project. Each instrument, generator plugin, and audio sample used in the project will need its own Mixer track. From there, you can route them to busses which will form the stem files when rendered.

Make sure they are labeled properly in the Mixer. These will eventually become the stem file names. Refer to this tutorial on the Mixer for more information on Mixer track routing.

OCD is an advantage here…

Step 2: Stem Export Settings in FL Studio

Now that we’ve organized everything in the Mixer, let’s tell FL Studio where to send our stems and tweak our export settings:

1. File
2. Export → Wave file
3. Choose or create a folder to save stems in

Now, a window opens with rendering options. These settings are important!

Project Type

• Set Mode to Full song – we want to export the stems for the entire length of the song.
• Set Tail to Leave remainder – this will continue the render length to capture decaying sounds such as reverb or delay at the end of the song.

Output Format

• The file type and format you should use will usually be .WAV at 24-bit resolution. 24-bit is the standard resolution for recording audio, and many mixing and mastering engineers would expect to receive your stems in 24-bit. That being said, there are some cases where you’d want to export to 32-bit – the best thing to do is ask your engineer!
• 32-bit is technically more accurate of a render and has a greater dynamic range, but the floating-point formats used can vary from DAW to DAW and you may run into compatibility issues.

Stem Export Quality

• The recommended setting for Resampling of audio during rendering is 64-point Sinc. Higher values will increase the quality, but also take longer to render your stems.
• HQ for all plugins should be checked
• Leave dithering unchecked – we’ll use this only for the final render if it’s even needed

Miscellaneous

• Split mixer tracks is arguably the most important setting for exporting stems in FL Studio. This setting creates your stems from each Mixer track. Make sure it’s checked.
• Save tempo information is also useful when exporting stems from FL Studio to another DAW. Make sure it’s checked, too.

Now, just hit the Start button and FL Studio will start crunchin’ numbers. Once the stem export is complete, you’ll hear a little jingle.

All that’s left to do is navigate over to your folder and choose which stems you want to keep. Usually, the mix engineer will set a limit on the number of stems you can send them. This is the time to be selective.