I'm posting this here because I think enough folks are interested in Izotope pricing and doing it this way will keep the original thread showing.
Anyway, User
Phil_Er_Up over at Lossless Legs posted this and I thought folks here would find it interesting:
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There are 2 audio software's that take a audio wav file and create 4 stems - Vocals, Bass, Percussion and Other instruments. There may be more software that does this though not aware of it at the moment.
One is called Izotope RX music rebalance.
https://www.izotope.com/en/products/rx/features/music-rebalance.html - You need to buy RX 11 standard which costs $399 now on sale for $239.40 at the above link.
Other is Ultimate Vocal removal tool. (UVRT)
https://ultimatevocalremover.com/ - UVRT is Free though really needs a high end graphic card with lots of ram to run fast.
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Background:
Have used both of these soft wares for about a year now. Was mainly using RX music rebalance
as a tool to make a matrix recording of both aud mics and SBD feed. Would split the SBD feed
into Vocals, Bass, Percussion and Other instruments stems. Load SBD feed then audio mics then
each stem into a audio editor. You have 6 tracks to work with now instead of two. If vocals are
low in aud mics then can use the vocal SBD stem and increase the vocals volume. Or if bass is
not there you can use bass SBD stem and increase the volume. The possibilities here are
almost endless. Almost have to change the way you think about processing your audio files.
The software seems to split better with a SBD feed then splitting the audio mic source. It does
not do a bad job on audio mic source though it is not as clean as the SBD feed stems.
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Does it work?
It sure does. Is it perfect - no. Though with vocals and bass seem to come out the best in RX MR
and drums can come out well though there is a bleed with some of the other instruments into the
drum stem. It the "Other instruments" stem where all the rest of the music is. If you have
guitar you want to increase there is no separate stem for that and you have to play with the
"Other instruments" stem to get it to come out. Some people think there is a metallic sound
from the vocal stem in RX MR.
Ultimate Vocal removal tool (UVRT ) separates the vocals better then RX MR. There are model in
UVRT that will split the audio file into 4 stems. You can even separate vocals into lead vocals
and backup vocals. One disadvantage of UVRT is it outputs 16 bit audio stems, not able to select
24 bit audio stem files. In RX MR you can get 24 bit audio stem files.
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What kind of PC do you need to run these software?
A high end PC.
To process one 60 minute sbd feed with RX MR on my old windows 7 daw took 1 hour 17 minutes.
3-4 years ago bought a laptop windows 11 I7 with lots of ram and fast CPU with built in graphic card
with 2 GB ram took the 60 minutes SBD feed to 18 minutes. Just bought a Win 11 I7 32 GB ram and very
fast CPU with good graphic card with 8 GB memory. Now to process 60 minutes SBD feed to 8 minutes for RM MR.
If record 2 70 minute sets have 4 audio files per source. So have to run each of the 4 SBD files
with RX MR to get stems for the whole show. Now to process all 4 SBD files with my new PC is
less then 30 minutes. Have to do this before I master the show. This causes more work and processing.
With UVRT you really need a graphics card with lots of ram or the software runs very slowly. Can
process in UVRT a 60 minute sbd feed with new pc in 8 minutes though it is only 16 bit audio files
as mentioned above.
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Where does this leave us with this new software?
Well as sidewider said yesterday in the shoutbox is if this software can really split the file into 4
stems then possibilities are endless. You could even take old SBD and add whatever is missing. This software
will get better over time too.
Does anyone else have experience with this or like to chime in about it?