LUNA 3.0: How to Export Stems from Universal Audio's DAW for Mixing

Universal Audio released LUNA 3.0 on September 15, 2026, and the headline addition is stem separation built into the DAW itself: LUNA can now analyze an existing track — a full band recording, a reference mix, anything — and split it into 2, 4 or 6 parts (vocals, drums, bass, piano, guitar, depending on the tier), alongside audio-to-MIDI and lyric transcription. LUNA Free includes 4-track separation; LUNA Studio adds 6-track separation plus the tape and console emulations from its Extensions.

This matters for a very specific reason: it means LUNA can now generate usable stems from audio that was never recorded as separate tracks in the first place — an old rough mix, a phone recording of a rehearsal, a reference song you want to study. That is a different starting point than a normal multitrack session, and it changes what you should check before mixing.

Two starting points inside LUNA

• A real multitrack session (recorded through an Apollo interface or imported from another DAW). Export each track normally — no stem separation needed, since the tracks are already isolated.
• A single audio file you want to split using LUNA 3.0's stem separation. This is the new path: the result is an estimate of individual parts, not a re-creation of the original studio recording, and it will carry some artifacts (bleed, occasional smearing on dense passages) that a real multitrack session would not have.

Knowing which situation you're in changes how much cleanup to expect once the stems land in a mixer.

Exporting from LUNA

1. For a normal session, use LUNA's track export/bounce to render each channel individually, keeping sample rate and bit depth consistent across every file — mismatched rates are the most common reason imported stems drift out of sync in another tool.
2. For a stem-separated file, run the separation first, review each resulting track in isolation (soloing each one, checking for artifacts before you commit to a mix decision around it), and only then export.
3. Print at full length from the same start point. Whether the source is a real session or a separated file, every exported stem needs to share one timeline origin so a stem mixer can play them back in sync.
4. Keep an unprocessed copy. If LUNA's tape and console emulations from the Extensions are printed onto a stem, that coloration is now permanent in the file — decide deliberately whether you want that baked in before you export, since it can't be undone downstream.

Bringing LUNA stems into MixingMusic

Once you have up to a handful of clean, aligned stems — from a real session or from LUNA's own separation — uploading them to MixingMusic's stem mixer gets you a genre preset as a starting point, three-band EQ and compression per stem, and a mastering pass once the balance is right. This is a file-based handoff: you export from LUNA and upload the result, with no account connection between the two products.

If what you actually have is a single finished mix from LUNA rather than separated stems, mastering the stereo file directly is the more direct path — there is no need to run stem separation just to get a track ready for loudness and tonal balance work.