Import Module

How to import files

Drag your audio files, or the folders that contain them, into the drop well on the Home screen, or click the well to pick them. fMusic expands the folders, resolves stereo content, recognizes instruments, names and colors every track, and opens the result in the editor, ready to be imported into Pro Tools.

The drop well

The Import Audio section of the Home screen is a single drop area. At rest it reads Drop audio here / or choose files…; while you drag over it, it switches to Drop to import, and a checkmark confirms the release. Clicking the well opens the system file picker instead, which accepts both audio files and folders, with multi-select.

Folders are expanded, everything else is filtered

Folders are expanded recursively, at any depth, with no limit on the number of files. This matches how stems actually arrive: producers deliver a song as a folder, and you hand that folder to fMusic as is. Along the way:

• Only files whose actual content type is audio are collected. Artwork, documents and project files are silently dropped.
• Hidden files and the contents of bundles are skipped.
• The final list is deduplicated and sorted naturally by path, so track2 comes before track10.

If the selection contains no audio at all, the editor opens empty, without a warning.

Supported formats

fMusic does not keep a format list of its own: any file macOS reports as audio is accepted. In practice that covers WAV, AIFF, MP3, M4A and every other format the system can decode.

What happens after the drop

You land in the editor immediately; the work starts a moment later, with progress shown above the timeline (Analyzing track N of M…). In order:

1. Folders are expanded into the file list.
2. Stereo content is resolved: .L/.R mono pairs are merged into stereo files, and each stereo file is classified by content and folded per your rules. See Stereo to mono conversion.
3. AI-R, the instrument recognition model, analyzes the whole set in one batch. It runs on-device and sorts each track into one of ten families: Bass, Brass, Drums, Guitar, Keys, SFX, Strings, Synth, Vocals, Woodwinds. A verdict it is not confident about becomes Unclassified, and the file name decides instead. The model can be turned off in Settings ▸ General with Use intelligent track recognition.
4. Every track is named in one batch by the Forte rename engine, so no two lanes share a name. See How fMusic names your tracks.
5. Each lane receives its category and color.
6. Lanes are grouped into contiguous category blocks in the order your Settings define, and enter the editor in a single operation. See How to organize tracks.

Files enter whole

fMusic never trims your audio on the way in: each file enters the editor as one whole clip. Silence is cut later, by Pro Tools itself, via Edit ▸ Strip Silence with your per-category parameters. See Strip silence.

One import goes into one session

An import always targets a single Pro Tools session. You choose which one on the Session Settings page of the wizard: the currently open session, a new session, an existing session on disk, or a session created from your template. See Import setup. From there fMusic drives Pro Tools and builds the session itself: track creation, placement, naming, colors and routing are applied automatically during processing.