Harnessing AI to separate out your old tracks
Creating stems from mixed songs has been a holy grail for years and is closer than ever with advances in AI. It is not perfect but it is getting better all the time and for many mixes it enables us to at least rebalance and improve issues that go beyond what mastering alone can do.
What we work on
We especially love to work on your nostalgic old recordings whether demos, or live recordings, where you only have stereo mixes and no original multi-track parts. 'Nostalgia' is the key word as results are unlikely to ever be good enough for commercial release. Think of it as like restoring old photos of a moment in time that can't be returned to.
What we can do
Often a mix may suffer from too much or too little of one component e.g. bass, drums, vocals etc. We can selectively isolate the problem instrument and remix it back in leaving the rest untouched to minimise artefacts. The clearer the original mix the more chance we have of total stem separation to create an improved version to re-mix with tools unlikely to have been available years ago.
We can often fix tuning errors - a vocal ruined with moments off-key, or a bass playing the wrong note. You may just want to remove that excessive reverb on the vocals that sounded great in 1985! We can even replace the drums with modern sounding kits played with the same vibe the original drummer performed.
What we use
There are many stem generators available - we use Steinberg's SpectraLayers Pro 12, which can separate drums parts and even distinct vocals. The separation process is not a particularly skilled task. That said, we often do prep like noise reduction or tonal adjustments to give AI a better chance.
Where we bring value is in the cleaning up of stems and carefully mixing back together with an array of software, along with studio-quality monitoring and of course mastering tools to polish your new mix.
Just to say ...
We only work on original songs which you own the rights to. We don't provide this service to un-mix commercially released tracks by someone else - sorry!
For best results your tracks should be at least 16bit 44.1Khz wav files - low resolution MP3s are not ideal, but we can still try!
AUDIO SAMPLES
Early 1990s recording un-mixed and re-worked
This song was recorded onto 16 track analogue tape, mixed to DAT (Digital Audio Tape) then archived to audio CD without any mastering.
The original suffers from muffled drums, especially the toms and poorly controlled bass guitar. The snare and vocals are also too loud and there is a lack of general mix balance. We stem-split the version taken from CD (the original multi-track tape has long vanished!) and were able to bring balance to the mix and clarity.
In this version the bass drum, toms and snare were replaced with similar sounding samples but still are played with the original timing. Finally the track was given basic mastering to polish.
Are You Coming Home Tonight by The Stroppies
1986 demo on 2nd generation cassette given more life
Originally recorded in 1986 onto 8 track analogue reel to reel and mixed to cassette this song was lifted from a cassette copy of the original cassette!
Not a bad original mix considering the process used to record it but we felt the vocals could be dropped in volume and the drums better defined. Recording a 24 bit wav file of the cassette we first applied noise reduction then stem splitting.
These old recordings archived in this way can never be perfect but for general listening we do prefer the new mix. There is better balance, more clarity and it is more engaging.
Friends To Enemies by The Stroppies
Late 1990s recording in cow shed to ADAT
This demo was recorded in a cow shed using a basic mobile studio to 8 track ADAT, then mixed to DAT.
Aside from the acoustics, the recording was hard to listen to due to the loud open high-hat. As with most demo recordings the mix was done at speed and never with the intention of release.
This de-mix produced poor stems so you can hear artefacts in the new mix - we include this to show you the results of starting with poor recordings. All YouTube demos of this technology start with clean well-recorded mixes which invariably produce amazing results!
That said the new mix is still better balanced and easier to listen to in passing. Pure nostalgia!
Hangman by Driving Morris