Mpc stems out now

EnochLight wrote:Your reality distortion field is mind boggling, jpeg.

You can clearly hear artifacts in the non-specifically-curated example above, and you know as well as I do that the material you use will absolutely determine the quality of the stem separation, artifacts and otherwise. So please, just stop. It's disingenuous and has become tedious and irritating, seriously man. And I say that as Akai's biggest fanboy.

u have technology based mindset hence ur looking for faults; ultimately the results is very usable especially for those who sample from dusty records the artifacts from vinyls records combined with artifacts facts from stems will gel and sound fine in the mix

so if u dont like my opinion u gonna have to live with it or ignore it cos i will say it how i see it; but i have yet to try for myself to confirm but the vids i seen the artifacts are a non issue except for those who are overly tech focused and less artisitically feature focused.

jpeg wrote:u have technology based mindset hence ur looking for faults; ultimately the results is very usable especially for those who sample from dusty records the artifacts from vinyls records combined with artifacts facts from stems will gel and sound fine in the mix

so if u dont like my opinion u gonna have to live with it or ignore it cos i will say it how i see it; but i have yet to try for myself to confirm but the vids i seen the artifacts are a non issue except for those who are overly tech focused and less artisitically feature focused.

This has zero to do with me allegedly being more tech focused versus “artistically” focused and everything to do with you making shit up. We can all hear for ourselves that RESULTS VARY GREATLY - with our own ears - when not using the specifically curated material chosen by the marketing department. I’ve got Stems for MPC as well, so it’s not like I don’t know.

Opinions are like assholes - we all have them. But facts are facts, and the fact is - like Tutor said - yeah it can sound really good. But it can also sound no different than any other stem separation tech, which is to say it can sound like ass and it can sound “meh” and it can sound “ok”. Facts. Not opinions.

jpeg wrote:

EnochLight wrote:Your reality distortion field is mind boggling, jpeg.

You can clearly hear artifacts in the non-specifically-curated example above, and you know as well as I do that the material you use will absolutely determine the quality of the stem separation, artifacts and otherwise. So please, just stop. It's disingenuous and has become tedious and irritating, seriously man. And I say that as Akai's biggest fanboy.

but i have yet to try for myself to confirm but the vids i seen the artifacts are a non issue except for those who are overly tech focused and less artisitically feature focused.

Wow!

I love jpeg

jaymack wrote:I love jpeg

I'm more of RAW file dude. It gives you more useful information to work with, but jpeg can be cool sometimes.

For workflow comparison, in Ableton, working with Demucs-separated stems provides a great way for warping, because I can use the Drums track as a clear guide, and the transient detector doesn't get confused if a guitar or bass is playing slightly "wrong". Having all tracks/clips shift/ctrl-selected, but the drum track in view, warp markers are placed on all tracks identically, but according to the drum track's timing. This is usually far superior to trying to warp-mark a full mix. With the clips set to be tempo Master, I first warp the project tempo to the audio, and when fully warp-marked, I set the clips to tempo Slave mode, and I get a very nice exact BPM version of the tune. And I can use a different warp algorithm for each track - Beats mode works best for drums and sometimes bass, and elastique pro for vocals and others. This is an excellent workflow, but cannot be done in Akai land, because of lack of working transient detection, tempo track and proper time-stretching. But Ableton works as a perfect pre-processing step.

MPC-Tutor wrote:However, if you add slice regions to the source the resulting stems adopt all the slice regions, so this is definitely a more unique MPC implementation..

THIS. Honestly, I do like how Akai implemented things for MPC so far, but this right here has me excited about it coming in standalone (assuming zPlane's algorithm isn't lowered in quality for standalone units just to shave time off of processing). I mean they definitely could have made some improvements in the implementation, but as it stands now - I'm not mad about it. Well, aside from being mad that I have to wait for actual standalone support.. Hoping it doesn't take months.

EnochLight wrote:This has zero to do with me allegedly being more tech focused versus “artistically” focused and everything to do with you making shit up. We can all hear for ourselves that RESULTS VARY GREATLY - with our own ears - when not using the specifically curated material chosen by the marketing department. I’ve got Stems for MPC as well, so it’s not like I don’t know.

Opinions are like assholes - we all have them. But facts are facts, and the fact is - like Tutor said - yeah it can sound really good. But it can also sound no different than any other stem separation tech, which is to say it can sound like ass and it can sound “meh” and it can sound “ok”. Facts. Not opinions.

yes there will be degrees of variation dependant on soure material; but the bottom line is useablility?
for tech focused producer like urself it may not be good enuff.

for the artistry focused producers its most definately it is usable;
I am happy to sample from youtube, vinyl or mp3; but a tech focused person; always needs a flac or wav file because ur obessive focuse on technical specs, and things being correct.

however there are people who are happy listening to and sampling mp3; so any artifacts from stems is not going to be a deal breaker.
especially those of us who grew up listening to worn out cassette tapes and recorded from analogue broadcasted radio to tape, and overedubbed the tape multiple times.

hence so lossy sound does not trigger me as much as it does a technical focused producer.

for a tech focused producer lossy formats are heresy; but guess what those classic 12 bit samplers back in the day also sampled in lossy bit depths.

there is a a whole lo fi movement where people use bit reductions and tape emulation to recreate that lossy tonality that u claim is an inferior sound, while others covet that loss of sound quality.

in the early 2000s there was a whole 4 track hip hop movement of people like living legends crew that made tons of albums on tascam tape and people loved that low quality asethetic.

so I have never been overly focsed on byte perfect sound quality

jpeg wrote:

EnochLight wrote:This has zero to do with me allegedly being more tech focused versus “artistically” focused and everything to do with you making shit up. We can all hear for ourselves that RESULTS VARY GREATLY - with our own ears - when not using the specifically curated material chosen by the marketing department. I’ve got Stems for MPC as well, so it’s not like I don’t know.

Opinions are like assholes - we all have them. But facts are facts, and the fact is - like Tutor said - yeah it can sound really good. But it can also sound no different than any other stem separation tech, which is to say it can sound like ass and it can sound “meh” and it can sound “ok”. Facts. Not opinions.

yes there will be degrees of variation dependant on soure material; but the bottom line is useablility?
for tech focused producer like urself it may not be good enuff.

for the artistry focused producers its most definately it is usable;
I am happy to sample from youtube, vinyl or mp3; but a tech focused person; always needs a flac or wav file because ur obessive focuse on technical specs, and things being correct.

however there are people who are happy listening to and sampling mp3; so any artifacts from stems is not going to be a deal breaker.
especially those of us who grew up listening to worn out cassette tapes and recorded from analogue broadcasted radio to tape, and overedubbed the tape multiple times.

hence so lossy sound does not trigger me as much as it does a technical focused producer.

for a tech focused producer lossy formats are heresy; but guess what those classic 12 bit samplers back in the day also sampled in lossy bit depths.

there is a a whole lo fi movement where people use bit reductions and tape emulation to recreate that lossy tonality that u claim is an inferior sound, while others covet that loss of sound quality.

in the early 2000s there was a whole 4 track hip hop movement of people like living legends crew that made tons of albums on tascam tape and people loved that low quality asethetic.

so I have never been overly focsed on byte perfect sound quality

This from the old Stem thread before it got locked; viewtopic.php?f=48&t=217066&start=390#p1878143

jpeg wrote:yes there will be degrees of variation dependant on soure material; but the bottom line is useablility?
for tech focused producer like urself it may not be good enuff.

LMAO! Where did I say that it wasn't usable? And in what universe aren't ALL OF US HERE "tech focused producers"? We literally all use tech to make our music. Stop with the strawman.

jpeg wrote:for the artistry focused producers its most definately it is usable;

That's adorable. You're an "artist" and I'm not, eh?

jpeg wrote:I am happy to sample from youtube, vinyl or mp3; but a tech focused person; always needs a flac or wav file because ur obessive focuse on technical specs, and things being correct.

No one asked for your definition of what a "tech focused person" is, and - regardless - that has ZERO to do with anything you and I are talking about. So again, stop with the strawman.

jpeg wrote:however there are people who are happy listening to and sampling mp3; so any artifacts from stems is not going to be a deal breaker.
especially those of us who grew up listening to worn out cassette tapes and recorded from analogue broadcasted radio to tape, and overedubbed the tape multiple times.

hence so lossy sound does not trigger me as much as it does a technical focused producer.

for a tech focused producer lossy formats are heresy; but guess what those classic 12 bit samplers back in the day also sampled in lossy bit depths.

there is a a whole lo fi movement where people use bit reductions and tape emulation to recreate that lossy tonality that u claim is an inferior sound, while others covet that loss of sound quality.

in the early 2000s there was a whole 4 track hip hop movement of people like living legends crew that made tons of albums on tascam tape and people loved that low quality asethetic.

so I have never been overly focsed on byte perfect sound quality

Now we're getting somewhere. To summarize:

1. You don't focus on perfect sound quality and are absolutely fine with things like digital artifacts and other processing anomalies that many would interpret as "shitty sound". Good for you!
2. You acknowledge that MPC Stems varies a great deal on what it can sound like, depending on source material. This makes it no different than literally every other stem separation service out there on the market - sound quality-wise.

I mean, if you're going to post the same video over and over again and claim "no artifacts", you surely have to realize that you're going to get called out on it, yes?

I'm not sure I feel in any way comfortable with the claim that if you value 'quality of sound' you are somehow only a 'technical' type and not an artist. It's not an 'either-or' situation, you can be an 'artist', a technician and seek to produce music with a distinct quality of sound.

If as a musician you have no problems with using or hearing lossy compression, or digital artefacts from stem separation, time stretching, warping etc, then that's fine, you make music how you want. If you value the sound from analogue sources, such as tape, vinyl etc, and seek to retain that warmth in your own music, then that's fine. None of that is a reflection of you as an artist.

For me, I absolutely do hear digital artefacts in all stem separated music. It doesn't mean that I won't ever use it, but I do find the resulting stems lack 'something' and have attained 'something else' that is not particularly desirable.

MPC-Tutor wrote:For me, I absolutely do hear digital artefacts in all stem separated music. It doesn't mean that I won't ever use it, but I do find the resulting stems lack 'something' and have attained 'something else' that is not particularly desirable.

Does anyone know of commercial high-profile productions that have used separated stems? Or is it more like DJs or home producers who want to have fun (such as me) who are using this.

HouseWithoutMouse wrote:Does anyone know of commercial high-profile productions that have used separated stems? Or is it more like DJs or home producers who want to have fun (such as me) who are using this.

It's all amateur bedroom producers or DJ's. No pros would ever use stem separation software...

I heard pete rock used stem seperation all over Main Ingredient