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Words
Stems, loudness, and the few other words the desk uses.
Stem
A stem is one part of the song: the voice, the drums, the bass, or everything else. A bounce is the whole song in one file. Splitting turns a bounce into stems so you can turn the voice up without turning the drums up.
Loudness
Loudness is how loud the finished file feels, measured in LUFS. Spotify and YouTube sit near −14. Apple Music sits near −16. Louder is not better once a service turns the file down to its own level. Loudness has the buttons.
A few more
- Fader: the slider that makes one part louder or quieter. It commits when you let go.
- Pan: left, center, or right.
- Master: the last stage, where the whole song is limited so the peaks stay under −1 dB.
- Style: a ready-made balance, such as Pop or Lo-fi. It replaces the effects. It does not stack on top of them.
- Connected tool: Cursor, Claude, Codex, or anything else speaking MCP with your key. History marks those edits as Tool.