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19Oct

Tutorial: Multi-Track Export From Ableton Live

If you want to export each track from your Live session so that you or a professional (like me) can mix in a different DAW, this is what you need to do. (Live 7 is shown in the example)

First of all:

  • Make sure your song is in arrange mode
  • Make a reference mix of what the song sounds like right now
  • turn off any effects that are unnecessary (reverbs, compression, especially on the vocals)

Your session

This is your song in arrange view.

Menu Option for export

From the file menu, select Export Audio/Video…

Render Options

Export Audio/Video window:

  • Rendered track: All Tracks
  • Normalize: OFF
  • Render As Loop: OFF
  • File Type: WAV
  • Convert to Mono: OFF
  • Sample Rate: 44100
  • Bit Depth: 16
  • Dither Options: POW-r 3
  • Create Analysis file: OFF

Click OK

name the files

Name the files, well actually just the prefix, exporting all tracks doesn’t keep the track names.

the waiting

Wait for the render to complete.

The exported files

Hey look at that! A wav file for each track and effect return, as well as one for the master. Unfortunately they aren’t named how they were in the song. (Maybe in future versions) You can delete the returns and the your_song.wav (master) one as they aren’t needed.

That was easy!

Now you can upload the files to somewhere like http://drop.io or the studio’s FTP.

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Comments:16

Leave a Reply
  1. Reply alex
    09/07/18

    most useful live tip ever. wish i could get 100 hours i’ve spent exporting track by track.

  2. Reply Jon
    09/07/19

    Happy to help Alex :)

  3. Reply AD
    09/08/25

    I have a question for you.

    I’m trying to export MIDI in Ableton Live 8.

    The MIDI track is already recorded, and what I do is go to File > Export Audio/Video with your settings, but the WAV file doesn’t sound the same as in Ableton Live.

    The VST I’m using is Synthogy Ivory. There is no damping nor sustained notes when I export, yet they are there when I hear the track in Ableton Live.

    Do you have any clue as to what’s going on?

    Thanks in advance,

    AD

  4. Reply Jon
    09/08/26

    Sorry AD, no clue, I’d suspect it to be a problem with Ivory

  5. Reply federsel
    09/11/19

    Thank you so much!I so happy to know this!

  6. Reply pd
    10/01/31

    AD try freezing the midi track.

  7. Reply nathen
    10/03/17

    I want to delete old ableton songs that i do not have any need for anymore and are just sitting on my external hard drive and would like in the future have all my songs in individual project files for easy deleting as well. How can i delete old ableton live sets, will i have to collect and save them into project files first just to delete them? or how do i do that if its the case? thank you very much for anyone that can tell me how to do this

  8. Reply lucy
    10/05/01

    how do I mix down all my tracks into one track (it that what ‘master’ is for?) to be exported. this should be so simple but I can’t seem to do it.

    I don’t have any effects involved. nothing. just a few tracks I recorded directly in and I want them to export as one piece???

    any advice would be greatly appreciated.

  9. Reply nate
    10/05/01

    Ok lucy first you need to highlight the portion of the song that you want to export. So left click with mouse hold and drag to highlight a small section in your song . i usaully do this on the master track! then hold down ctrl+A this will highlight whole song all tracks to the end of the last wav or midi file in project, then after its all highlighted go up to file then to export, make sure the master is selected in the top little box asking which tracks you want to export! thats it : ) all done choose a destination then enjoy

  10. Reply Immenzo
    11/01/10

    Hej Ad,

    I have the same problem, when i record some track in live 8 with Nexus 2 and this project is finisht, al my sounds (wav and midi) sounds good in live, have mastered it, but than i export the track as wav file and save that the track sounds not so as in live 8. And is bad when i burn it on a cd :(

    can some one help?

    thx,
    immenzo.

  11. Reply tampabobby
    11/04/10

    me to! lol

  12. Reply Bryce
    11/04/24

    Hello, i am using ableton live 8 and i am trying to export the audio into a wav file that will actually play. I export a track and it worked fine but I thought it would be all the tracks in the project but it was only one. But it did play. Now i erased it to try to make one with all tracks in one but now every wav file i create will not play in windows media player anymore. Any help would be great.

    • Reply Jon
      11/04/25

      Hi Bryce. You just need to export an audio mixdown of the project. That’s not the purpose of this article.

  13. Reply kutrugen
    11/06/28

    hi guys i have i problem in live 7 lets say a track that has time signature changes and i have to warp every beat and its warped perfectly and when i export it with the analisis file and import bact to live it is almost as it was with the time signature changes as the graph shows and i have to re warp again… can anyone help?

  14. Reply Jon
    11/06/29

    @kutrugen
    Not sure what’s causing the problem. You can try recording the output of the warped audio to a new track.

  15. Reply guuyfly
    11/07/18

    I am going crazy trying to export from Ableton as a WAV. It exports but there is nothing there.. the file is a 1/2 second flash of nothing. I have followed all the directions here. I’ve highlighted the tracks, got all the settings to export as WAV described here…just nothing! What am I doing wrong?

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Tutorial: Multi-Track Export From Ableton Live from Audio Geek Zine
pingback from ProToolerBlog → Post » REVIEW: Ableton Live 7 November 16, 2008

[...] a little annoying. You can if you want bounce all tracks separately at once (Audio Geek Zine has a tutorial for it). A great feature, but I still think that with Rewire we shouldn’t have to do [...]

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