Stem Export Calculator

The calculator explicitly discards trackCount in the math (it's read and then intentionally ignored) because stem export renders one pre-summed submix per stem group, not one file per individual track. Total Tracks is shown purely for your own context — to remind you how many tracks are feeding into however many groups you're exporting — since 40 tracks split into 8 groups still produces exactly 8 files.

Each stem is sized as an uncompressed stereo WAV: sample rate times (bit depth divided by 8) bytes per sample times 2 channels times duration in seconds, converted to megabytes. Bit depth feeds directly into that bytes-per-sample term, so moving from 16-bit to 24-bit multiplies the raw byte count by 1.5, and 32-bit doubles it relative to 16-bit — with every other input held constant.

No — it uses a fixed assumption of 50 MB of exported audio per minute of processing time, applied uniformly regardless of your CPU, plugin count, or whether you're bouncing offline or in real time. Sessions with heavy plugin chains (convolution reverb, oversampled saturation, dense sidechain routing) will typically render slower than this generic estimate suggests, while a lightly processed session may render faster.

Storage Needed multiplies the raw Total Export Size by 1.5 as a safety margin, accounting for temporary render files your DAW creates during the bounce process and the fact that you'll typically keep the exported stems alongside your original session rather than deleting it. If you're checking whether a drive has enough free space for an export, use the Storage Needed figure, not the raw Total Export Size.