To send stems, bounce every track from the same start point at the session's sample rate and bit depth, name them so they sort in order, put them in one folder with a short notes file, and send the folder as a link — never as email attachments and never re-encoded to MP3. A mix engineer can then drop them into a session and hit play.
I run Yungle, which is one way to send the link. The preparation below matters more than the service, and it is the part people get wrong.
Bounce from the same start point
The one rule that saves more sessions than any other: every stem starts at bar one, zero, even if it is silent for three minutes. Consolidate or bounce each track from the song's start, so that a mix engineer can line them all up by dragging them to the beginning of a session.
Stems that start where the instrument starts look tidy and cost someone an hour of nudging regions into place — and one wrong nudge puts the chorus vocal a beat late.
Match the session, and do not convert
Bounce at the sample rate and bit depth the session was recorded at. If it was 48 kHz, 24-bit, send 48 kHz, 24-bit WAV. Converting down to save space, or worse, to MP3, throws away detail the receiving engineer wanted.
The honest cost is size. A single three-minute 24-bit stereo stem is tens of megabytes; forty stems of a long song run well past a gigabyte. That rules out email and makes "compress it a bit" tempting. Don't. Send the real files another way.
Name files so they sort
A folder of Audio 1.wav to Audio 38.wav is a riddle. Use a pattern that sorts and reads:
01 Kick.wav,02 Snare.wav,03 Overheads.wav…21 Lead Vox.wav,22 Lead Vox Double.wav30 Synth Pad.wav,31 Bass DI.wav,32 Bass Amp.wav
Numbers keep the folder in the order a mixer would lay out the session. Clear names mean nobody has to solo a track to find out what it is.
Include a notes file
One plain text file, in the folder, saves a round of messages:
- Tempo, key, sample rate and bit depth.
- Whether effects are printed or dry, per track if it varies.
- Anything that must stay: "the vocal distortion is the sound".
- Your contact details.
Engineers read this before they open anything else, and it is where "why is the snare so quiet" gets answered before it is asked.
Send the folder as one link
Now the delivery. Upload the whole folder, get a link, send the link. The folder should arrive exactly as you built it — numbered files, notes file, subfolders if you use them — and the upload should survive the connection dropping halfway, because a few gigabytes over a home connection takes a while.
With Yungle a transfer takes up to 10 GB without an account, keeps the folder structure, resumes where it stopped, and tells you when the engineer has downloaded it — so there is no "did you get the files?" message the next morning. The page for musicians and audio shows how a producer would use it across a release.
Getting mixes and masters back
The return trip is usually smaller but more frequent: a mix, a revision, a revision of the revision. Two habits help:
Version in the filename, not in the email. Song Title — Mix v3 — 2026-09-22.wav tells you everything; "latest mix attached" tells you nothing in a month.
Listen in the browser before downloading. If mixes land somewhere your client can play them — Yungle plays audio in the browser inside a collection, with favourites and comments on each file — notes come back tied to the right version instead of in a separate chat.
When the project is sensitive
Unreleased music leaks. If a record is under embargo, put a password on the link and give it an expiry date, so a forwarded link stops working on its own. Secure sharing covers both, and the general version is in how to send large files securely.
Checklist
- Every stem bounced from the same start point.
- Session sample rate and bit depth, WAV, no conversion.
- Numbered, readable filenames.
- A notes file with tempo, key and what is printed.
- One folder, one link, a receipt when it lands.
For video that has to travel with the audio, how to send large video files is the companion piece.