With stem splitting becoming increasingly popular I’ve been looking at an easy way to integrate it into my workflow. I really love to use it on samples or vinyl and then feed it into my DT.
I’m using Ableton and have been looking at VST’s, but since Logic now has it and Serato Sample has increased their price from 99 to 160 I’ve been tempted to switch DAWs.
But then again; is it worth the time and effort for something like this? Amazing music has been made without splitting stems, by just using EQ and such.
How are you guys working stems into your workflow?
Logic is amazing and a great complement to Ableton and hardware. Generate ideas and sounds using the more jammable environments then bring them in to logic for arranging and polishing. I really like the tools Logic brings to the table for groove and timing.
Serato sample is good and fun but also (imho) unjustifiably expensive.
I’ve had stem splitting software for a couple of years now - RipX - but honestly I’ve used it maybe a handful of times for splitting samples in to stems. Was actually more inclined to use it to split full songs to learn and practice them than for sample-based productions.
I think the process of going into a different piece of software definitely affected this, but also I don’t really feel like it’s totally essential, like you say I usually prefer to just filter and EQ. But, since I’ve gotten this function in Logic I have used it a couple of times and been pretty impressed, it’s so quick and easy that you might just try it to see how it works in a lot of cases. There’s a million other, better, reasons for getting Logic, but it definitely works well.
For just under the past 20 years of so I’ve used Live and Logic in tandem and as mentioned they each have their strengths and are an awesome combination.
Serato being 160 with logic being like 240 or something is insane. I did really like the key finder in Serato though; but I suspect AI will do a good job at that soon.
But staying in Live is the easiest. And cheapest… they are behind on stuff like this though which is a shame.
I use spleeter, is free libre open source and many commercial solutions are based on this, it requires a bit of technical knowledge to make it work (Specially since this version doesn’t work with current versions of the dependencies needed) but other than that is a great tool
If you do go with serato sample or ripx. You can assign either of those programs as the default audio editor in Ableton. So when you go to an audio clip on Ableton that you sampled, you can hit the edit button on it and it will automatically open your stem splitter. You can process in there without having to leave Ableton
I’ve not followed this area for a while but at least back when I last tried it, Meta’s Demucs yielded much higher quality results than Spleeter for me (and also free and OSS, runs pretty quick on my M1 Max with all cores).
I suspect most of the commercial tools are based on this, I’ve not heard any commercial results which seemed significantly more advanced, though I’m sure there additional innovations they’ve made.
quick post here… traktor 4 just got released with stem separation.
… its not realtime but the tracks ive tried were reasonably separated…
… dumped into a new folder as a single mp4 with a weird random name
…if ur a mac user, u’d be stupid not to invest these 200 bux plus once and forever, for one of the elder statesman daws out there…logic pro is in the game for too many good reasons since more than three decades…and their latest take on stem splitting is indeed part of the top notch ones…
beats easily many of those pretty pricey third party plugins that do nothing but splitting up stereo summed up signals…almost no artifacts even on backingvocals once buried deep into a mix come out totally “naked” again…
More often than not I just use my mixer, it has sweepable hi/low filters and a parametric eq. I like to isolate the sound/frequency I want live. It is an extra opportunity for modulation and to build that feeling of journey, evolution and emotion in the music.
But I like evolving techno, or trance rhythms and that is my style, might not work for you and your gear.
& I’m a painful old git who has a distain for pop music and most modern DJ’s who try to incorporate a build up and drop into their set every 3 minutes so…
