Maybe a CD with the old song originally recorded with audio equipment and originally released on vinyl and later re-released on CD as it is i.e. without any remix etc, could be seen as the "uncompressed" version of an old song (but I don't know).
It could be ripped as a WAV file with Windows Media Player (legacy). To make a compressed MP3 version to use as comparison maybe one could use Audacity and select a suitable compression level (unless already available on YT
All good ideas. Here's a thought:
If sufficient interest exists we could research and test this and related topics with the goal of producing practical "best practice" reports in PDF format with associated audio files. Based on how much we are all struggling here, I think I can guarantee that we'd all learn and grow. And perhaps in the bargain this could be the spark needed to extend this forum from being the center of the BiaB universe to a center for the much larger subject of audio processing and sound engineering.
If done right, it could be an attractant to techno-musicians in younger generations to this forum and hence BiaB. I'm not experienced enough to lead such an effort, but I'm not too shabby at documenting our results. There could be all kinds of subjects we could cover, subjects way beyond simply producing bass stems. Of course, we'd need smart, experienced, "worker bees" that are willing to stretch themselves.
I've been accused of "thinking too big" in the past, so if this idea is considered too grandiose for folks here, I get it.
https://soundcloud.com/user-646279677 BiaB 2026 Windows For me there’s no better place in the band than to have one leg in the harmony world and the other in the percussive. Thank you Paul Tutmarc and Leo Fender.
FWIW, I think that in the near future AI will not only be separating stems with frequency but also with tone. Thus it could separate an acoustic guitar from an electric guitar, a bass guitar from a tuba, etc.
Back in my day the only time we started panic buying was when the bartender shouted "last call"!
64 bit Win 10 Pro, the latest BiaB/RB, Roland Octa-Capture audio interface, a ton of software/hardware
Ahhh, the old saying, "you only get what you pay for" <ha ha>
AudioTrack, I do have the paid version. What version do you have?
Hey Steve, I certainly never suggested that you didn't have the full version. In fact, with your significant involvement, I would be surprised if you had mentioned otherwise.
I don't have any version. I've never had a requirement to use it. My input here was really only to think about solutions that might give improved results, hence the discussion about using AI.
I apologize if my 'tongue-in-cheek' comment was taken the wrong way about finding that a paid version of anything usually had more features. It was only a generalization that can be applied to many things, and certainly not directed at anyone here.
BIAB & RB2026 Win.(Audiophile), Windows 10 Pro & Windows 11, Cakewalk Bandlab, Izotope Prod.Bundle, Roland RD-1000, Synthogy Ivory, Session Keys Grand S & Electric R, Kontakt, Focusrite 18i20, KetronSD2, NS40M, Pioneer Active Monitors.
Try Ripx DAW ( Ripx DAW PRO ) - Ripx DAW PRO has extra - means of cleaning recordings. Ripx DAW can separate stems into more than four tracks and has its own algorithm for this, which is different from Spleeter. He separates the drums into three feet. If the bass is mixed with the guitar, it can be returned from the guitar track to the bass track manually. Notes as blobs can be tapped to sound. Both types of Ripx can be tried for free for 21 days. https://buy.hitnmix.com/
BIAB 2025,RB 2025,PTA 2024,Windows 11,Studio One PRO 5.5.2,Melodyne Studio 5.4.2.006,Sibelius 8.4.1,Acoustica 7.4.14,Notion 6,Progression 3,Harmony Assistant 9.9.5c,RX9,Ripx DeepAudio 7.5.1,Kontakt 7.10.7,DeCoda 1.3.2,Synthesizer V Studio Pro 1.12.2
FWIW, I think that in the near future AI will not only be separating stems with frequency but also with tone. Thus it could separate an acoustic guitar from an electric guitar, a bass guitar from a tuba, etc.
I think the present software already does that to a very large extent, though perhaps not quite in those terms. I think it would be impossible to achieve the separation they're managing today without a good recognition of which bits of the total sound apply to which instruments. The envelopes will tell a lot, but certainly not everything.
If all instruments produced just harmonics of the fundamental, I suspect isolation would be relatively(!) easy, but when most instruments, including voice, produce overtones and sympathetic resonances, it must become very difficult to identify what sounds belong to which instrument. We've probably all heard times when a bass has causes a snare or cymbol to sound, similarly a piano with the dampers off.
Jazz relative beginner, starting at a much older age than was helpful. AVL:MXE Linux; Windows 11 BIAB2026 Audiophile, a bunch of other software. Kawai MP6, Ui24R, Focusrite Saffire Pro40 and Scarletts .
I apologize if my 'tongue-in-cheek' comment was taken the wrong way about finding that a paid version of anything usually had more features. It was only a generalization that can be applied to many things, and certainly not directed at anyone here.
To be honest, I wasn't quite sure how to interpret what you were saying, and so we got our wires crossed a bit.
All is well my friend. Hopefully by the time this thread has run its course we've all learned at least something regarding separation of instruments in general, not just bass.
With AI unfolding before our eyes, we are truly living in exciting times; not all that different from when we first walked on the moon.
"That's one small step for neural networks and one giant leap for human capability"
https://soundcloud.com/user-646279677 BiaB 2026 Windows For me there’s no better place in the band than to have one leg in the harmony world and the other in the percussive. Thank you Paul Tutmarc and Leo Fender.
All good. I actually thought that must have been the case. Yes, AI is here to stay (like it or not), and unquestionably can bring about many improvements, and hopefully we will all continue to benefit from what it can deliver. Eventually though, to continue to evolve, AI will need to learn new things from, well, AI. That bit scares me
BIAB & RB2026 Win.(Audiophile), Windows 10 Pro & Windows 11, Cakewalk Bandlab, Izotope Prod.Bundle, Roland RD-1000, Synthogy Ivory, Session Keys Grand S & Electric R, Kontakt, Focusrite 18i20, KetronSD2, NS40M, Pioneer Active Monitors.
Try Ripx DAW ( Ripx DAW PRO ) - Ripx DAW PRO has extra - means of cleaning recordings. Ripx DAW can separate stems into more than four tracks and has its own algorithm for this, which is different from Spleeter. He separates the drums into three feet. If the bass is mixed with the guitar, it can be returned from the guitar track to the bass track manually. Notes as blobs can be tapped to sound. Both types of Ripx can be tried for free for 21 days. https://buy.hitnmix.com/
Ya, I got that one - it is a beast of features. Not one of my favorite. But, I agree that this does appear to be a different type of algorihym - sems to have the Melodyne blobs. I tried it on our test case. There was NO sound on the bass track (first 32 bars below) . The bass was mixed in on the Kick Drum track. And I didn't and wouldn't even try to adjust anything manually.
Try Ripx DAW ( Ripx DAW PRO ) - Ripx DAW PRO has extra - means of cleaning recordings. Ripx DAW can separate stems into more than four tracks and has its own algorithm for this, which is different from Spleeter. He separates the drums into three feet. If the bass is mixed with the guitar, it can be returned from the guitar track to the bass track manually. Notes as blobs can be tapped to sound. Both types of Ripx can be tried for free for 21 days. https://buy.hitnmix.com/
Ya, I got that one - it is a beast of features. Not one of my favorite. But, I agree that this does appear to be a different type of algorihym - sems to have the Melodyne blobs. I tried it on our test case. There was NO sound on the bass track (first 32 bars below) .
Many thanks Dan, you're saving folks like me from wasting time with software that doesn't perform.
Gause Zdenek, did you try RipX on our test case?
https://soundcloud.com/user-646279677 BiaB 2026 Windows For me there’s no better place in the band than to have one leg in the harmony world and the other in the percussive. Thank you Paul Tutmarc and Leo Fender.
Eventually though, to continue to evolve, AI will need to learn new things from, well, AI. That bit scares me
Why scared? If an AI was trained by an AI and the result was a highly effective program to separate bass . . . I'm good.
Where I become concerned is if/when it becomes sentient. In my mind, sentience implies life; artificial life perhaps, but still life. And we know 2 important things about life; it fights to survive and it fights to reproduce . . . I don't think we want a "HAL" on our hands.
https://soundcloud.com/user-646279677 BiaB 2026 Windows For me there’s no better place in the band than to have one leg in the harmony world and the other in the percussive. Thank you Paul Tutmarc and Leo Fender.
Sorry, but I haven't tried your test example, just trying to advise that Ripx is mostly sufficient for my needs as far as tools go. With my voice - bass position - under C2 I have a problem with Ripx, but also with Melodyne. But with Ripx it shows me two tones instead of one and they are higher. A note sounds at the correct pitch if both are sounded at the same time. If I mute one of them, it sounds at the pitch it is displayed at. I know the reason, because I sing under D2 (I can't do it otherwise) with the "Growl" technique and it is not continuous, like the bass tone (the one is continuous). These "Growl" tones could be replaced by perhaps a Tuba. I'll let here the "Growl" technique sound from professional Eric Hollaway (ThatBassVoice), I'm just only an amateur at the singing level. I have not tested this song on Ripx. Sorry for getting off topic. Here is the link:
Last edited by Gause Zdenek; 10/11/2409:56 AM.
BIAB 2025,RB 2025,PTA 2024,Windows 11,Studio One PRO 5.5.2,Melodyne Studio 5.4.2.006,Sibelius 8.4.1,Acoustica 7.4.14,Notion 6,Progression 3,Harmony Assistant 9.9.5c,RX9,Ripx DeepAudio 7.5.1,Kontakt 7.10.7,DeCoda 1.3.2,Synthesizer V Studio Pro 1.12.2
Well gentlemen (and any ladies watching), I think we have success!
I upgraded to Studio One ver 7 and asked it to separate the bass on the above song by The Fortunes. This test-case is no mamby-pamby test case, it’s a stress-test; intentionally chosen for the low-end brass in contains. We might call it a “tuba test”.
There is so much that can be said here. The software team at Presonas knocked this out of the park. It isn’t perfect but is definitely something musicians can work with. I hear no brass, the bass that is retained makes melodic and rhythmic sense to me, there are no erroneous gaps and I can even hear the slides that he’s doing on his neck.
I exported this out in WAV format but that’s a moot point because SoundCloud will certainly step on it in its processing. FWIW, I hear no meaningful difference between the original WAV and what is up on SoundCloud.
I’d be interested in the perspectives of any audiophiles or bass players. To me, it sounds like he’s using a pick, which maybe he is on the original recording or maybe it’s an artifact of the separation process. There also seems to be a bunch of reverb present and it's a bit wobbly. But these are nits, it extracted a usable bass line from within a cloud of other instruments competing in the same frequency range and that just blows me away.
Note that Presonas’ solution didn’t care one bit about this being a 60s song or that it was compressed to keep the YouTube people happy. Most likely they trained it on “messy”, compressed, real-world training sets and that, in part, is why it works. If I were on the team, that's what I would push for; train on the lowest common denominator.
This thread is titled "State-of-the-art Stem Separation for Bass", based on one attempt with Studion One and imho, Presonas has achieved the state-of the-art and I'm guessing they're hard at work on 7.1 and beyond.
https://soundcloud.com/user-646279677 BiaB 2026 Windows For me there’s no better place in the band than to have one leg in the harmony world and the other in the percussive. Thank you Paul Tutmarc and Leo Fender.
Yes, it seems to be a significant improvement. I just loaded the YT mp3 version into SMP and extracted the bass stem and compared it with your SOP7 version on SC (above). It is a significant improvement for the bass stem of that song. It would be interesting to know how the other stems are.
BIAB 2026, Studio Pro 8, Song Master Pro, Win11 Home. i7-9700K CPU, 32GB, ESI MAYA44eX, ZOOM UAC-2, Guitar Pro 8, Transcribe, (EZKeys2, EZD3, SD3, EZBass, EZMix3) Amateur: fiddle, guitar, vocal, beginner on bass.
I’m glad to read this result. I just installed Studio One Pro 7 but I haven’t had time to conduct any experiments for this thread. [ I’m immersed in writing Christmas concert music. ]
BIAB 2026 Win Audiophile. Software: Fender Studio One 8, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Presonus Quantom HD8 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
Congratulations, this is a great effort. If Studio one can do it, others will follow for us non-Studio One users. I just sent a note to our SMP support guys asking if future work is planned liked this.
Congratulations, this is a great effort. If Studio one can do it, others will follow for us non-Studio One users. I just sent a note to our SMP support guys asking if future work is planned liked this.
Certainly no congrats are owed to me, I'm just a Joe-user. But I'm guessing they're popping champagne bottles at PreSonus over this release.
If I put my project manager business hat on, I'd be thinking about selling/leasing their stem separation code to people like RipX, SongMaster and DAWs that haven't yet matured this technology. But only their middle-shelf version; you never want to share your top-shelf stuff. It could be a meaningful revenue stream if done right.
I also like to think about and find info on what degree they collaborated with other entities to achieve this. I haven't found any press releases but my AI assistant says this: PreSonus has a history of both in-house development and collaboration with external partners for various projects. While specific details about the development of the stem separation feature in Studio One 7 haven’t been publicly disclosed, it’s common in the industry to leverage both internal expertise and external collaborations to achieve complex technological advancements.
My guess is that they worked with at least a University, AI consulting firm, or a heavyweitght like Microsoft or OpenAI. It would seem to be a lengthy, expensive project to grow the required AI talent in-house. Kudos to PG if they collaborated with PreSonus, as David has said they are well positioned to do.
If anyone finds info on this, do share.
https://soundcloud.com/user-646279677 BiaB 2026 Windows For me there’s no better place in the band than to have one leg in the harmony world and the other in the percussive. Thank you Paul Tutmarc and Leo Fender.
I just did a fast test of a song I’m working with, comparing stem separation in Studio One Pro (7) and Song Master Pro.
The bass sounds much better - fuller - in Studio One. In Song Master Pro it is more like a ghost of a track.
I have not yet found the way in Studio One to capture this bass track as MIDI, which I can do in Song Master Pro. If it exists, I haven’t found it in the Help.
There is also an advantage in Song Master Pro in being able to separate the piano and guitar, which are combined in a track called Other in Studio One.
In case anyone is interested, since it’s related to transcribing songs, Studio One’s chord track does not recognize any chord upper extensions. By this I mean above the original octave, or any step of 9 or higher, including any alteration such as a b9 or #9. Song Master Pro gets many wrong but at least it tries.
If these functions are improved in the future Studio One could become my one go-to program for transcribing.
BIAB 2026 Win Audiophile. Software: Fender Studio One 8, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Presonus Quantom HD8 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
I got a bit of feedback on this topic from SMP support which I think is very insightful. I am sure John would not mind me sharing with the forum. I for one will keep an eye on SMP and look forward to what John will be able to do for us in the future.
Quote
Thanks for bringing this to my attention--it's always useful to get feedback (good and bad) on our program.
To clarify, when we first released Song Master several years ago our stem separation was based on Spleeter, however, last year we greatly improved the quality of separation with a brand new algorithm. We trained our algorithm on high-resolution audio sources so I'm not entirely surprised that we didn't cleanly separate the bass from the lower quality YouTube audio. These things can be a bit finicky and work great on some tracks and not so good on others and greatly depend on the audio tracks they're trained on.
I wouldn't base the quality of a stem separator based on the quality of just one instrument on one track. I noticed that Studio One's separator is a four-track separator. Four stems are the sweet spot for separators because each stem has unique properties/signatures. For example, percussion instruments splash frequencies across the entire spectrum, vocals have formants that help to make them stand out, bass is usually monophonic and only has to share the frequency spectrum with the kick drum. Untangling the mass of frequencies produced by other instruments is challenging. We did notice some degradation in stem quality for bass, drums, and vocals when we added support for piano and guitar. Synths are particularly messy to handle and when present can really affect the stem quality.
Stem separation is still very much in the early stages of technology development and will continue to get better over time.
Dan, thanks for sharing, and that makes sense. I wonder if they could add an option to separate guitar and piano as it is now, or add those sounds to The Rest for superior quality of the other four tracks.
BIAB 2026 Win Audiophile. Software: Fender Studio One 8, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Presonus Quantom HD8 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
I just did a fast test of a song I’m working with, comparing stem separation in Studio One Pro (7) and Song Master Pro. I have not yet found the way in Studio One to capture this bass track as MIDI, which I can do in Song Master Pro. If it exists, I haven’t found it in the Help
Good job Matt, this is where (I think) I need to go next; to push the Studio One separated bass track into MIDI and then push the MIDI file into tab.
These pieces are slowly falling into place, which is very neat.
I would imagine that 6-string guitarists would also be interested in this becaues like the bass, there are several places on the fretboard you can play the same (or similar) note. But only one way that is optimized of ease and speed.
https://soundcloud.com/user-646279677 BiaB 2026 Windows For me there’s no better place in the band than to have one leg in the harmony world and the other in the percussive. Thank you Paul Tutmarc and Leo Fender.
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