Okay, I’ll chime in here….and someone correct me if I’m wrong, I’ll own up to it. This should be open to discussion. But in this ‘modern age’ I’m getting awfully tired with certain terms being thrown around without any thought of where they come from. And the dumbing down of the system is numbing.
STEMS are not delivered to a mix stage. Apple got the term wrong. Nothing is a ‘stem’ until the final mix is completed. Going to audio post, the dialogue or whatever tracks you choose would be SPLIT out in either raw UNITS or, if you’ve done some mixing to the tracks beforehand, PREDUBS.
There is a history of this within the filmmaking community, but apparently the modern age can change the vocabulary with Clinton semantics.
And Simon is right: there is simply no substitute for getting the untouched audio out of whatever NLE you are using (via OMF/AAF as things currently stand) and mixing in a dedicated environment both software and physical (i.e. on a professional level DAW in a properly calibrated room with properly calibrated professional gear) – preferably with a properly trained audio professional. “