Stupid question (Render to Stem)

I'm pretty sure the answer must be "yes", but please reassure me :) When I render a track to a stem track (and mute original), and that track is a folder containing child tracks with sends, the result of any of those child track sends (e.g. to a reverb) end up in my rendered stem, correct? However, any effects in any folder track they (or the folder itself) belong to, don't get rendered. Is that right? I just had a crisis of confidence! :)

The resulting track would be as if you solo'd the track (ie, includes all the child tracks and any sends that happen to be received within that folder also. If a track is sending outside of that particular folder structure, then I doubt that that would be rendered into the track. The effects on the folder track that you have 'stemmed' will be rendered into that mix also.

Yes, it's the send (from the child tracks) to tracks outside the rendered folder that I'm not sure about. I do think I'm hearing differences. I should maybe avoid it under these circumstances. The particular folder was a backing vocals folder, with each BV set up slightly differently regarding panning and reverb, etc.

Hmm.. maybe this wasn't such a dumb question. Does anyone actually know? It seems to be a fairly important question (to my workflow, anyway!).

easy way is just to rig up a project with some very noticeable sends and try it?

You are quite right. I tested it this morning. Sends from child tracks to tracks outside the folder will be lost on "render tracks to stem tracks (and mute originals). It makes sense that it has to work this way, but it also means that rendering a folder to stems can change your mix considerably, so isn't always a good idea.

Current stem-rendering behavior (Reaper v3.75) renders the audio such that you could mute the track, put the newly rendered stem in the same place, and you'd have an exact replacement. So the rendering point for stems is after volume, pan, and FX, but before it is summed with anything else. This is a useful stemming function. But it is not useful for stemming out entire mixes in one swoop IF: > some of the tracks you want to stem are ganged into folders for mutual volume adjustment or fx > the master track has volume, pan, or FX For instance: three horn parts are mixed relative to each other, then are in a 'horns' folder with its own volume, which is in an 'all instruments' folder with its own volume. Selecting the three horns and stemming gives me the track's volumes, but does not apply the volume of the 'horns' folder track or the 'all instruments' folder track. Thus the stems don't reflect the mix. Is there a toggle somewhere that causes the Render Stems function to render each track AS IF you had solo'd that track then rendered the full mix? I thought that when I was last running off stems (nine months and many point releases ago), that the default was the behavior I'm looking for.