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I've banged on about this before.
I know I can use a reascript in REAPER to work around this, (seriously, how silly is that?), I've been told I can open the "stems" as stereo in REALBAND, (yeah, & it's the weekend so I can't activate RB without email communication with support as my recording comp is OFFLINE and again how silly is it that an external prog has to be involved?), and export the stuff in stereo but what I REALLY, REALLY WANT is to not have to do anything extra.
Why, oh why are overheads, room & tom "stems" etc. frequently MONO?
The stereo "MIX" that comes with the stems has stereo room, overheads and toms blended in but the actual "stems" aren't stereo.
Someone could at least explain the WHY.
I really thought "stems" would be a major step forward but not being able to mix then because of the mono incongruity makes them of less use than the premix.
Today's disaster was with PopRockShuffle:a:Snare, Closed hat etc,
The overheads, room & toms are stereo in the premix but mono in the stems.
I checked in the BB/Drums/PopShuffle etc. folder and the WMA files there for room & o/heads play back, from inside the folder using WMP or Groove Tune, as stereo.
I'm quite prepared to publicly prostrate myself & perform flagellation if I've been doing something wrong.
PLEASE.
Last edited by rayc; 08/30/25 08:49 PM.
Cheers
rayc
"What's so funny about peace, love & understanding?" - N.Lowe
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Why, oh why are overheads, room & tom "stems" etc. frequently MONO?
The stereo "MIX" that comes with the stems has stereo room, overheads and toms blended in but the actual "stems" aren't stereo.
Someone could at least explain the WHY. It seems likely that's not the case.
Last edited by Gordon Scott; 09/03/25 09:13 AM.
Jazz relative beginner, starting at a much older age than was helpful.
AVL:MXE Linux; Windows 11
BIAB2025 Audiophile, a bunch of other software.
Kawai MP6, Ui24R, Focusrite Saffire Pro40 and Scarletts
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Band-in-a-Box Wishlist
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Why, oh why are overheads, room & tom "stems" etc. frequently MONO?
The stereo "MIX" that comes with the stems has stereo room, overheads and toms blended in but the actual "stems" aren't stereo.
Someone could at least explain the WHY. I'm pretty sure that the intent is to give us the raw mic feeds so that we can do our own panning and reverb, etc.. Yes, that would seem to be the case but when the "raw" mic feeds appear as mono, for what is normally a stereo pair (AND indeed is stereo at source), panning becomes a problem. How does one pan for crash & ride and keep the snare's place etc. from a mono file? Added to this the reality that the WMA files in the DRUMS folder actually play in stereo but turn up in track view as mono and imported into a DAW as mono the intent, I suggest, isn't being achieved.
Cheers
rayc
"What's so funny about peace, love & understanding?" - N.Lowe
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Even just this sentence you wrote states the problem very clearly:
“The WMA files in the DRUMS folder actually play in stereo but turn up in track view as mono and imported into a DAW as mono …”
+1 for a change to stereo throughout, absolutely.
BIAB 2025 Win Audiophile. Software: Studio One 7 Pro, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Presonus 192 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Slate VSX, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
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This is a bug in BB - I've added it to our database with bug id# 5072. This can be "fixed" any time you encounter it by editing the StemInfo.txt file in the offending Realdrum folder. In the case of PopRockShuffle, edit the contents of StemInfo.txt to this: KickIn,6.0,6.0,1
KickOut,0,0,1
Snare,4.4,4.4,1
SnareBottom,0,0,1
HiHat,1.61,6.0,1
Toms,2,2,2
Overhead,5.0,5.0,2
Room,0,0,2 The last parameter of each line is the channel count - 1 for mono, 2 for stereo. This parameter was added to fix a bug where all the mono stems generated as stereo (with mono being the default), and it seems that some of the StemInfo.txt files were missed. So if you find any others, you can fix them by adding a comma and a 1 or 2 to the end of each line. Either way, once the dev team tackles the bug report I filed this should no longer be an issue, so if you're not comfortable editing the txt files then don't worry for now.
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Does this apply only to the Overhead,TOMS, and Room, or can you change other parts of the kit to a 2 and it will work?
BIAB 2025 Win Audiophile. Software: Studio One 7 Pro, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Presonus 192 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Slate VSX, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
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Does this apply only to the Overhead,TOMS, and Room, or can you change other parts of the kit to a 2 and it will work? It applies to any part that is actually using a stereo audio file.
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Ok, thanks. I take that to mean, examine the audio file in the RealDrum file and if it’s stereo, but the TXT file has a 1, you could choose to make it a 2.
OR just wait for a patch😎
BIAB 2025 Win Audiophile. Software: Studio One 7 Pro, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Presonus 192 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Slate VSX, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
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Ok, thanks. I take that to mean, examine the audio file in the RealDrum file and if it’s stereo, but the TXT file has a 1, you could choose to make it a 2. Almost - you need to add ",1" or ",2" to the end of each line. OR just wait for a patch😎 Precisely.
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This is certainly something to look forward to.
I've tried the workaround and it does indeed work in most instances. I tried it one one project and it completely stuffed up the drums - as in they wouldn't load so it was probably user error & another reason to wait for the patch.
Cheers
rayc
"What's so funny about peace, love & understanding?" - N.Lowe
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