Stems come out of a session named after whatever the tracks were called in that session. Which means they come out named Audio 1, Audio 7, and 8-KICK_ONE_SHOT [2020-12-06 112055]. The song is finished and the folder is unreadable, and the person who has to read it is not you.
Why exported stems are named badly
It is not carelessness. It is that a track name is a note to yourself in the middle of writing, and a filename is a message to someone else at the end.
Every DAW builds the filename the same way, from the name of the track or mixer channel it came from, and then adds its own decoration around it. Logic Pro, Ableton Live, Pro Tools, Cubase, Studio One and FL Studio all differ in what they put around that name, and none of them differ in the part that matters: whatever the channel was called is what you get.
| DAW | Where the name comes from | What it tends to add |
|---|---|---|
| Logic Pro | The track name | Nothing much, which is why a track called Audio 7 arrives as Audio 7 |
| Ableton Live | The track name | The set name and a number, so the useful part sits in the middle |
| Pro Tools | The track name | Clip and take numbering on anything bounced from clips |
| Cubase and Nuendo | The channel name | Whatever the naming scheme is set to, plus counters if it is on |
| Studio One | The track name | Little, and it follows the track name exactly, including its mistakes |
| FL Studio | The mixer track name | Insert numbers on anything left unnamed |
- Track names accumulate while you work. A channel called Audio 7 gets used for a shaker at two in the morning and never gets renamed.
- Sample based tracks inherit the sample's filename, which is why timestamps and one shot markers end up in there.
- Duplicated channels come out as copies with numbers appended.
- The export names the file after the track, so every one of those problems is exported with it.
What a good stem folder looks like
There is no universal standard, and everyone who receives stems has an opinion. These are the parts nobody argues about.
Named by what it is
Kick, Snare, Bass, Lead Vox, Backing Vox, Pad. The engineer should be able to build a rough balance from the names alone before playing anything.
One format throughout
Same sample rate and bit depth across every file. Mixed formats in one folder is the thing most likely to get the whole package sent back.
All from the same start point
Every stem starting at the same place in the timeline, so dropping them all in lines them up. This is worth more than any naming decision.
Trimmed, tails intact
No dead air on the end, but reverb and delay left alone. The tail is part of the sound and cutting it means a re-export.
Fixing the names after the export
You can rename in the session and export again, which is the cleanest route if the session is still open and the track names are salvageable. Often neither is true: the stems are already bounced, the session is closed, and the names in it were never good.
At that point you are renaming files in a folder, and the problem is that the useful information is in the audio rather than in the name. A file called Audio 7 is a shaker, and only listening to it will tell you that.
Doing the naming and the cleaning together
This is the case CutTheBullshitBrooo was built for, because both halves of the job are per file and both are tedious at volume.
It reads each file and works out which instrument it is, tagging it in its own color across 14 categories: drums, bass, vocals, synths, guitars, keys, brass, woodwinds, strings, mallets, percussion, FX, ambience and more. It can then rename the whole batch from that, at three levels: a light clean of the separators, a smarter clean, or full renaming by instrument. Where a name would collide, the duplicate gets numbered.
On the same pass it trims the useless silence off the end of every file, with a waveform preview of each cut and a safe time setting that keeps reverb tails and fades intact. Originals stay untouched and clean copies export separately, so the folder that leaves is smaller, readable, and still recoverable if anything needs redoing.
If the folder is a music library rather than a set of stems, the tag based approach in RenameBrooo is the better fit, since it builds names from artist, title, version, BPM and key.