Export the master channel and any other individual tracks such as return outputs or multitracks for remixing and other purposes. It's not always a bad idea to have individual multitracks for your projects!
Ensure the start and end points of the render frame are aligned correctly. This can often be an overlooked parameter.
- Mastering typically takes place on the master channel itself, unless other methods of processing have been favoured or requested. In which case exporting the master channels output, with all internal I/O routing verified, is the traditional method.
- You may choose to export just the master for promotional purposes or individual track outputs for a variety of reasons including remixing and stem mastering. Bear in mind, although any given track may contain segments of silence between instrumentation, that entire tracks length contributes to the overall file size of that multitrack. Ensure you have the capacity on your hard drive to export the desired number of tracks.
Take, for instance, the example below;
All you see is a drum occur every once in a while. That being said, the silence between drums, that is the audio that exists along the zero crossing, is still PCM encoded meaning the silence requires just as much hard drive space as the "active" waveform (drums)
Normalizing
To normalize an audio file means to increase the gain of the entire audio filer until the highest amplitude peak reaches 0dB. This step is crucial to recovering any absent headroom created with the limiter in the mastering chain. Note, normalizing must be OFF when exporting a mix to ensure the minimum allowable headroom is maintained prior to the mastering process.
Stereo-file (interleaved)
As a reminder, stereo files utilize two exclusive channels of audio while mono files utilize the same signal for the left and right channels. Subject to desired file size and type.