How to Export Best Quality Track Ableton

Unless you're going to keep your precious musical creations trapped in a little bubble, sooner or later, you'll need to create a finished mix so you can get them out into the real world. There are two methods – the first is to play through the arrangement in real time and capture it into a tape machine or some kind of digital recorder, or – more likely – export it as a stereo file to the same computer you created it on! At various times, this process will be called export, render, or bounce, but they all mean the same thing.

Slice and dice

If you want to render just a section of your arrangement, click and drag in Live's Arrangement View to highlight the selection, or type the bar values in the Export Audio/Video box. You don't have to highlight anything if you're exporting the entire arrangement, but often it's best to use the Select All function to highlight the whole thing, so you can visually check what's happening at the end of the song. This is a fast way to find out if there are any forgotten bits of clips or automation hanging around at the end.

In many cases, the default export settings work fine; they'll provide a CD-quality stereo file that contains the entire mix, with any relevant effects and automation. If you intend to do further mixing or mastering, then avoid normalising at this stage (that's when the loudest part of the file is boosted to the maximum without incurring distortion and brings everything else up in proportion).

Before exporting, make sure your mixer settings, including solos and mutes, are correct, because that's how they'll come out the other side. Export formats include AIF, WAV, and FLAC, and MP3, if you want a lower-res version for faster file sharing/uploading purposes. Do not use MP3s for mastering, or for live performances. Really.

The Rendered Track box is where you choose what gets saved to disk. The options here are Master, All Individual Tracks, Selected Tracks Only (my current favourite), Groups, and Returns. If you're working with somebody using another DAW (shame on them!), select All Individual Tracks. Every track in your project, including returns, will be exported as stereo files of the same length, so they'll match up easily later.

Dithering

Most of the export settings are fairly self-explanatory, but dithering might not be so obvious – this is a process that introduces imperceptible noise to your audio, which sounds like a weird counterintuitive idea, but it helps avoid audible artefacts when converting audio to a lower bit depth. If in doubt, leave it at the default Triangular setting. If you're rendering from Live at 32-bit, you'll see that Dither is greyed out, because no reduction is taking place.

Another thing that further complicates audio export is when you've used external hardware instruments or effects in the project and they're routed through Live tracks. You have to make sure everything is properly connected and configured, then it'll be included in the mix as you'd hope, but it'll have to export the song in real time – it'll have to play through the entire thing. It works fine, but can be tiresome if you're the impatient sort. Time for a cup of tea.

Mr Freeze

If you've done tweaking those parts, you could freeze and flatten the tracks that rely on hardware, resulting in an audio file-only version that'll be faster to work with and won't require the other gear to be connected. ReWire, which we talked about in a recent tutorial, also comes into effect when rendering, but it's actually very simple, and smoother than when you're using connected hardware; when you render from the 'master' application, everything in the 'slave' project will automatically be included.

When it comes to video projects then serious video editing is best handled with dedicated software such as Adobe Premiere or Apple's Final Cut Pro, but Live has a handy little utility for stretching video if necessary, and doing it the other way round, that is stretching audio to fit the video. It's sometimes quicker to import a low-ish resolution version of the movie and work to that, then add the audio to the master version in FCPX.

Working with video is a whole different ball game in terms of computer hardware. A computer that works fine for stereo mixes and laptop jams can be grossly underpowered for regular heavyweight video rendering. We're using an iMac and a MacBook Pro here, but it's advisable to shop elsewhere if you're doing video all day every day; a faster computer will save you hours of waiting around.

That aside, Ableton Live 10, in particular, has the audio quality and all the tools you need to mix and master your music, there are world-class mixers and mastering engineers out there who use nothing but Live now. It can be done!