Logic Pro Stem Splitter

[burpgun]

Apple's announced an interesting feature in a Logic update due very soon that will allow you to seperate a fully mixed track into stems based on instrument type. I've messed around with some of the AI based tools currently out there and know there are some more serious options available even now, it's kind of wild to see tech able to reverse engineer a track in this fashion.

A use case that facinates me is, imagine you just put up some sort of stereo mic to record your band jamming and capture everything in the rawest most live fashion possible. Then, drump the track into Logic, pull it apart and polish it as needed. If "Stem Splitter" can do this, that's pretty worthwhile.

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2024/05/ ... -features/

[øøøøøøø]

This tech has been around for a little while now, usually in expensive restoration suites like iZotope RX.

Like many miracle drugs, it can sometimes work well enough to broadly accomplish what it says on the tin, but there are some trade-offs.

Of course we'll probably start to hear more and more of those unintended behaviors, and they may wind up interesting, and in 20 years people will be seeking them out and copying them...

[Plumerai]

This would be cool for bootlegs. Boost/clean up parts. (autotune if it's siouxsie).

[burpgun]

I've done some cursory messing around with Stem Splitter. It works although as one would expect: not perfectly but still quite good. I took a track from an album I worked on and when all the now separated stems were played together it was like nothing had happened. Individually, the drum, vocal and guitar stems came out well with some modest artifacts, while a very full range bass track fared less well, when heard in isolation.

I can see a lot of different applications. In my case I'd been doing some work where I'd recorded in a single track a drone with playing over top, as it was all coming off the same pedal board. I can now break that up and as long as I keep the two tracks playing it will still sound pretty good, I'll just be able to properly mix the once joined components. Stem Splitter would also be very useful to strip the drum track out of a mixed track, convert that to MIDI and remap to the drum sounds of your choice, and capture the performance in better fidelity. I'm also weighing how I can use this to clean up a bunch of old boombox band practice recordings.

As someone who once paid a grand for Logic 20 years ago when barely anything was included beyond the DAW itself, it's pretty wild you get this tech for a $200 now.

[ldp54002]

For something that was included for free in an update, I'm more than happy with it. The results are on par (or maybe just ever-so-slightly better) than what I've seen from freemium offerings in the past. I've used the free/limited version of Moises.ai before and what Logic produced was pretty much identical to that, without the need for uploading a track to a web app or phone app.

I was most impressed with how well it did with a mono Motown track. There was plenty of frequency bleed across the spectrum--like all good 60s Motown, it was mastered really hot and was approaching "wall of sound" for the backing track. Logic did a great job of pulling out the bass and vocals, and there was only minimal artifacting on the drums (mostly the hats).

I've never used one of the paid offerings, but as I understand it, their biggest claim to fame is they can go beyond just drums/bass/vocals/"other". In that Motown track I did with Logic, the guitars, piano and strings were all combined into one track. Supposedly, some of the paid/subscription versions could further pull the guitars out, or the strings, etc. I've never used one of those, so I'm not sure how well they do.