Disable plugins when exporting stems unprocessed

[DrNI (Niels)]

Hi there!

Not sure if this might even be in latest versions of Ardour, but I can’t check/upgrade since I’m stuck in a production (as usual. )

I did a recording session for somebody else to mix in some other DAW and now I have to do a lot of stem exports. For me and myself, I did a rough mix in order to confirm that the tracks work in a mix. So my tracks now have some plugins in there.

Now I’m doing stem export of unprocessed audio. I could now disable all plugins in the mixer to speed up this process quite a bit. But then again – when unprocessed is selected during stem export, this could happen automatically.

Best
DrNI

[peder (Peder Hedlund)]

Aren’t the plugins being disabled when you uncheck “Apply track/bus processing”?

The Ardour Manual

[x42 (Robin Gareus)]

@peder

Don’t the plugins get disabled when you uncheck “Apply track/bus processing”?

Not quite. Ardour grabs the signal just after disk processor (before any pre-fader plugins), but the whole session still runs and processes as-is.

This is required since you can also stem export any busses, or bypassing plugins may have other side-effects.

[DrNI (Niels)]

So, I see… it’s not as easy as I would have thought.

So the only function one could have, but then a rather esoteric one, would be a global bypass switch on all plugins, “use at own risk”.

Perhaps its better to live with the fact that stem exports may take longer due to plugins running.