Is UVR5 The Best Stem Separator?

[kidslow]

Is RipX some kind of DAW-ish thing or standalone app for stem separation? I couldn't figure it out by their site.

Seems like it might be one or the other or both. A friend did the seps with RipX and I used Rx and Acon Remix, all on the same song, then we sat there and A:B'ed the results together.

I don't need to do separation in the DAW, do you?

Are you trying to separate out just vocals or create stems for vocals, drums, etc?

[tommyzai]

I like to use a separate stand-alone app for stems. Keep it simple and hopefully powerful. I am using Remix, but always seeing what else is out there.

[kidslow]

Acon Remix sucked hind tit with the song I tested on.

Frankie did a comparison between RX11 and RipX, where RX compares favorably. I don't think it's a thorough enough comparison and not sure I agree with his conclusions from what I hear, but worth a closer look. Also plan to take a closer look at UVR5.

Those are probably top 3 right now afaict.

[kidslow]

Installed UVR5 on Mac Sonoma ARM, and couldn't have been much easier to get running.

Good discussion here.
https://github.com/Anjok07/ultimatevoca ... ssions/689

The diagram there really helped me understand the concept of how one might use UVR models to polish iteratively to shave off the cruft. Very impressed by the results after very few attempts.

The models could be better documented. Batch mode with saved setups (like Izotope RX Advanced) would take it next level. Better naming of output would help. But open source gets a huge and the results seem to be a step improvement from RipX.

[highkoo]

Yea imo it needs better documentation, or just a redesign of how the gui communicates what its doing. Its simple, just not intuitive.
Oh yea- that Kim Vocals 2 model seems very good too. I used that and the VR one for a bunch and was mostly impressed.

Fwiw, by far the cleanest technique Ive ever seen combined phase inverting instrumentals, and UVR. There was a youtube channel that has since been deleted that got deep doing that, and got results that were hard to believe on all kinds of music. Sounded like studio recordings.

[machinesworking]

I've been down this path for a few weeks now, so many stem separators and not a lot of differentiation between them.
Specifically I have unmastered 1/4" two track studio recordings of my band from the 80's that are badly mixed. I'm trying to use them to pull the vocals and guitar up. Vocals are not so hard for most of these programs but guitar is another story. There are only a couple of these that even attempt guitar separation, it seems that's the bleeding edge.

Three more to add to the list:
Demux GUI is another free one - https://github.com/CarlGao4/Demucs-Gui

The only paid one to attempt guitar is Gaudo Studio - https://studio.gaudiolab.io

The best sounding one I've used is AI-Lyd, but it's not free, and their guitar algorithm needs some work- https://ai-lyd.no/en/

About to download UVR5, do any of it's algorithms do electric guitar? Demux has one, but there's zero documentation with Demux, so the github chat for UVR5 at the very least is useful.

[mgw38]

UVR5 allows you to work with different models and generally is the best provided that you know what you are doing. We recently had a chat with the lead developer of UVR5 on our podcast "Spatial Audio Monthly". I have an edited version of the interview on my main channel. Video contains a link to the full podcast episode.

[Lotuz2019]

Demucs in UVR5 in most cases is very usable to me to remove/isolate drums and bass, but it’s the ‘other instruments’ stem that bugs me a little. Is there a stem separation tool that allows you to input the name of a certain instrument? If in a track I can identify for example a Rhodes electric piano and I would like a stem of this single instrument, then I’d like to request the stem separation tool to focus on this instrument, compare it with a database of various Rhodes electric piano samples, filter out other instruments, and if this filtering degrades the Rhodes stem too much, use the database to repair the Rhodes stem.

[__K__]

Yeah. I second that Rhodes isolation / extraction
Preferably combined with a polyphonic audio to MIDI - That would make my learning so much easier..

[kidslow]

Listened to the full podcast episode of Spatial Audio Monthly referenced above, and found it quite informative. Are all current stem separation tools operating on spectrograms? Curious.

For those requesting guitar stems, apparently the HT Demucs v4 model 6s will attempt to separate out guitar.

htdemucs_6s: 6 sources version of htdemucs, with piano and guitar being added as sources. Note that the piano source is not working great at the moment.

It is not in the Demucs pulldown but does appear to be an option (in the version of UVR5 I have installed), when I go into Download Center tab and try a manual download. More background on the demucs models here:
https://github.com/adefossez/demucs

If I heard correctly, the current cleanest models are MDX23C, but they also unsurprisingly take the longest time to run.

[osiris]

I've done the one in FL Studio and the one on the Bandlab platform and Bandlab was the winner on vocals. FL was better for the other tracks.

[sacer]

I have compared Izotope RX10, Acon digital remix and FL studio -
UVR5 is right now the best solution to separate vocals without artefacts.

I don’t know if RX11 is now performing better, but neither RX10, Acon digital nor FL studio come close the results of UVR5

Also UVR5 is fastest solution if you have a fast GPU - I have NVidia RTX 4080 and it performs in seconds while other competitors takes minutes with a much more worse result

[tommyzai]

How can we get going on UVR? It's a bit confusing.

[Saffran]

I like https://www.stemroller.com/

[tommyzai]

Any new thoughts . . .

UVR is a bit confusing, but free. The 44.1k limitation is fairly limiting.