When you send tracks for mixing, how they sound is only half of it. How they're packed decides how much of my time goes into your music and how much goes into admin. Well-organised files mean fewer questions, fewer delays, and more of the budget spent on the mix itself.
Here's how to make your trip down the File Highway as smooth as possible, whether you're sending tracks to me or to anyone else. None of it is difficult. Most of it takes ten minutes if you do it before you bounce.
Before you export
Send multitracks, not stems
Multitracks means every track exported on its own file: each mic, each DI, each vocal take, separately. Stems means those already grouped down, all the drums bounced to one stereo file and so on.
Multitracks are what let me move the snare without moving the overheads, or sit a guitar back without dragging the bass with it. Once parts are glued into a stem, those decisions are already made and I can't unmake them. If multitracks genuinely aren't practical, sensible stems are still workable, but keep vocals and any lead parts on their own.
Take the processing off your master bus
If there's a limiter or a compressor on your master bus, check what your DAW does with it when you export individual tracks. Some route every track through the master chain on the way out, which bakes the same processing into all of them and squashes what I'm given before I've touched it.
Bypass it, export, then put it back. If you're not sure whether your DAW does this, say so when you send the files and I'll listen for it.
Tidy the obvious edits, and only the obvious ones
Worth doing: crossfade your comps so there are no clicks, top and tail the silence where a mic was open in the live room, and delete the takes you know you'll never use.
Not worth doing: heavy timing correction, tuning, or anything you're doing because you think you should. Send it as it is and tell me what's bothering you. Editing and tuning are chargeable work, so if a part needs it we should agree that up front rather than have you spend a weekend on something I'd approach differently.
Exporting
Start every file at bar one
This is the one that causes the most pain when it goes wrong, and the easiest to get right.
Export every track from the very start of the song, even the ones that don't come in until the last chorus. That way I can drag all forty files in at once, drop them at zero, and they line up. If instead each file starts at its own first note, nothing lines up and someone has to reconstruct your arrangement by ear before any mixing happens.
Most DAWs call this exporting the full timeline, or exporting from the session start, rather than "region only" or "selection only".
Keep one sample rate and bit depth throughout
Export WAV at the sample rate you recorded at, and don't convert on the way out. If the session is 48 kHz, send 48 kHz. Mixed rates in one folder is a real thing that happens and it's a real thing that has to be untangled.
24-bit is the sensible default. There's nothing to gain from 32-bit float on delivery and nothing to gain from dropping to 16-bit, which only throws away headroom.
Export mono sources as mono files
A close-miked snare, a DI, a lead vocal: one microphone or one input means one channel. If it comes out as a stereo file with the same audio on both sides, the file is twice the size for no benefit and it isn't really stereo, it just looks like it.
Genuinely stereo sources, overheads as a pair, keys, synths, wide guitar patches, should of course stay stereo. The rule is simply that the file should match the source.
Send DI and amp for guitar and bass
If you tracked through an amp with a DI split, send both. The amp take is your sound and the starting point. The DI is the safety net: if a take is great but the tone fights the mix, I can re-amp it rather than ask you to play it again.
It costs you nothing but an extra file per part, and on bass in particular it's often the difference between a part that sits and a part that doesn't.
Send effects both ways where they matter
If a delay, a filter sweep or a big reverb is part of the performance, print it. That's a creative decision and I want to hear what you intended.
Send the dry version alongside it though. Printed effects can't be undone, and a reverb chosen against your rough mix often needs to be a different reverb once the whole thing is balanced. Two files, both options open.
Include a tempo map
If your song has a click, export the tempo as a MIDI file and drop it in the folder. It takes seconds.
With it, every tempo-synced delay and every rhythmic effect I set up lands with the track from the start. Without it, and especially if the tempo moves, I'm tapping it in by hand before I can use any of them.
Packing it up
Name every file so nobody has to guess
Descriptive names, not whatever your DAW called them. Kick_In.wav, Snare_Top.wav, Gtr_Rhythm_L_DI.wav, Vox_Lead.wav.
The alternative is Audio 07.wav, and the only way to find out what that is involves soloing it. Multiply that by forty tracks and you've spent the first part of your mix on filing. Getting this right is genuinely the single biggest favour you can do the person mixing your record.
One folder per song, named after the song
If you're sending more than one track, keep each song in its own folder named after it. It sounds obvious. It stops the version of a snare from one song ending up in another, which is a mistake that's very easy to make and very annoying to find.
Add a rough mix and a reference
Include the rough mix you've been living with. It tells me what you're used to hearing, which arrangement decisions were deliberate, and where you expect things to sit. I'm not going to copy it, but it's the fastest way to understand the song.
A reference track or two helps just as much: a commercial record with the kind of sound you're after. Between the two I know where you're aiming before I've moved a fader.
Zip it and send a link
Zip the folder and share it with WeTransfer, Google Drive, Dropbox or similar. Don't email individual files, and don't send audio through anything that re-encodes it.
Check the link works from a private browser window before you send it. A drive link that needs permission is the most common reason a project sits still for two days.
That's it
None of this is about being precious. It's about making sure the time you're paying for goes into decisions that change how your record sounds, rather than into renaming files and lining up regions.
Do the work before you bounce, and the first thing I hear is your song, properly, in one go. That's a better start than any plugin.
If you're not at the export stage yet, For Those About to Record covers the session itself. When you're ready, have a look at what a mix costs or put your song forward for a free mix.
