Exporting Your Arrangement: A Step-by-Step Guide

Now, hopefully, you're happy with your arrangement. You've liked everything and made all the changes you want. Now, it's time to export!

Exporting from Different Views

Exporting is possible from both Arrangement View and Session View. The actual export depends on which view is currently active.

Exporting from Session View

• Clips Activation: If you want to export from Session View, only clips with activated clip launch buttons will be rendered.
  • Note: If nothing has been launched, you would get silence.
• Start Clips: Make sure to first start all the clips that you want to render out.
• File Export: Then go to File > Export > Audio/Video.
  • In Session View, you can specify the length by beats or 16th notes (e.g., four bars or however long you want).
• Settings: The rest of the export settings will essentially be the same as those in Arrangement View.

Once you've made all the settings, click OK, and it will be rendered. You'll be able to choose where to save it.

Switching to Arrangement View

• Click the Back to Arrangement button first.
• Selecting Export Range: Now, you need to choose what should be exported. Loop braces are useful to remind you of the selection.
  • You can also just highlight what you want to export, but using loop braces is typically safer.
• Exporting the Whole Arrangement: If you want to export everything, you can choose that option.

Then go to Export > Audio/Video.

Rendering Preferences

• Rendering Options:

  • If you want to render the stereo mix, keep it on Master.
  • Otherwise, you can choose to render all tracks individually (audio, MIDI, and return tracks).

• Normalization:

  • Decide if you want to normalize. If you normalize, the maximum volume will be set to 0 dB.

• Loop Rendering:

  • It generally doesn't make much sense to render whole arrangements as loops. However, it can be useful for Session View clips.

• File Types:

  • Choose between WAV or AIFF.
    • WAV is best for Windows, while AIFF is standard for Mac. Since I'm on Mac, I will choose AIFF.

Sample Rate and Bit Depth

• Set the sample rate and bit depth. Typically, you'll want to keep it at:
  • 44.1 kHz (regular quality)
  • 16 bit (CD quality)

Dither Options

• Choose from the following dithering options:
  • No Dither: Best if you plan to work with it further.
  • Rectangular or Triangular: Triangular is considered the safest as it offers fewer artifacts.
  • 32 Bit Options: If you've processed audio (like consolidation and freezing), you can render in 32 bits but generally go with 16 bits for CD burning.

Final Steps

• Analysis File: Decide if you want to create an analysis file. This can be useful for re-importing into Live, but we will keep it off for now.
• Video Export: Since we don't have any video, we won't be exporting that.
• SoundCloud Uploading: Optionally, if you want to upload audio to SoundCloud right away, you can turn that on and log in.

Once everything is set, click OK.

Saving Your File

• You'll be prompted to choose a location to save the file. For this example, let's save it on the desktop.
• Since we turned on normalization, the process will search for the amplitude maximum and perform normalization.
• Finally, it will render the file to disk.

Conclusion

And that's it! You now have your exported file ready. You can listen to it on iTunes, burn it to a CD, or use it however you wish.