Export Multitrack Stems

File ▸ Export Multitrack Stems… writes one audio file per track instead of a single mixed-down episode. It exists for handing a session off to an external mixing and mastering service — Auphonic is the one PodEditor is built around — so it does its own leveling, noise reduction and ducking on each voice separately, rather than on a mix PodEditor has already flattened together.

If you just want a finished MP3, use File ▸ Export… (⌘E) instead — see Quick Start. This page is for the multitrack hand-off.

What each stem contains

Every stem carries your edits: cuts, moves, clip gain, and any ducking you’ve applied. What it deliberately leaves out is anything a mixing service is about to do itself:

• No loudness normalizing, no export limiter. A stem’s level is whatever your clip gain and Auto Level already set it to.
• Aligned to the session start. A track whose audio begins ten minutes in still produces a file that starts with ten minutes of silence, so every stem lines up on import — this is exactly the “all files start at the same timestamp” alignment Auphonic’s multitrack import asks for.
• Muted and empty tracks are left out automatically. They can’t be switched back on for this export; unmute the track first if you actually want it included.

If your session has chapter markers, a <Project Name> - Chapter Marks.txt file is written alongside the stems, ready to paste into Auphonic’s chapters field.

If you’re also using Auphonic’s own ducking, turn off any ducks you added in PodEditor first — otherwise a bed gets ducked twice, once by you and once by Auphonic.

The options in the sheet

Format

Three choices, traded off by size and by what’s downstream:

FLAC is a fixed-point format, so a track that peaks past full scale has to be turned down by gain alone to fit — PodEditor turns it down only as far as that one track’s own peaks require, and reports how much per track. Two stems in the same set can end up nudged by different amounts; that’s fine here, because the whole point of sending stems is that Auphonic levels each track independently anyway. If the balance between tracks matters to you directly — because you’re handing them to another editor, not a mixing service — pick 32-bit float, which is never turned down at all.

Preset

Only shown when more than one qualifies. A preset has to be lossless with no loudness target and no limiter to be offered here — the point of a stems export is a flat, unprocessed signal, so a preset built for a finished episode (mono, −16 LUFS, limited) isn’t a legal choice. The built-in Multitrack Stems (Auphonic) preset is the default and normally the only one you need.

Tracks

Every eligible track (unmuted, not empty) is listed with a checkbox, checked by default. Unchecking one excludes it from this export only — it doesn’t mute the track in your project, and it isn’t remembered for next time.

Muted and empty tracks are listed too, but greyed out and marked “Muted” or “Empty” rather than shown as a checkbox — they never produce a file.

The main reason to uncheck an otherwise-real track is a mixing service’s own upload validation: a track that’s mostly silence with one or two short stingers in an hour-long episode can read as “no signal” to a service that checks a file’s overall level, even though the audio on it is correct. Excluding it here for this one export sidesteps that without muting it in your project.

How this is designed to work with Auphonic

The shape of the export mirrors what Auphonic’s multitrack workflow expects: one file per voice, all aligned to the same start time, with nothing pre-processed so Auphonic’s own algorithms — leveling, noise reduction, ducking — have an unmodified signal to work on. Today the hand-off itself is manual:

1. File ▸ Export Multitrack Stems…, choose your options, then Choose Folder… to pick where the stems and chapter marks file are written.
2. Start (or open) a multitrack production on auphonic.com.
3. Upload each stem as its own track. Auphonic names tracks from the file name, so a track exported as Episode 12 - Host.wav shows up as “Host” — there’s no separate renaming step.
4. Paste in the chapter marks file’s contents where Auphonic asks for chapters, and set your usual per-track and per-episode Auphonic settings (leveling, noise reduction, denoise, loudness target).
5. Run the production and download the finished mix from Auphonic when it’s done.

Where to next

• Editing concepts: what clip gain, Auto Level and ducking actually change, if you want to know what a stem is carrying before it gets to Auphonic.
• Quick Start: the single-file File ▸ Export… path, if you don’t use a separate mixing service.