deMIX Pro is pretty damn good at vocal separations! Check this out

[Blackwood]

Speaking of drums etc., wasn't that one of Elliot Scheiner's main surround mixing axioms - "keep the rhythm section up front" (bass and drums)

anyway... hang with the old Pupster here for awhile for a somewhat related tale of wonder and woe!

My all time favorite Jeff Beck album is 1980's 'There and Back.' Attempting to do an up-mix of this one over the last few years has been one failure after another. I blame it on a soft mastering and little stereo instrument isolation in the mix.

Here's some other similar thoughts on that on the SHF:

https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/jeff-beck-there-and-back-horrible-mastering.689539/
I've been working (again) on the song 'Space Boogie' the last couple of days and I believe I may have come up with an idea, but wouldn't mind some input from others that know this album/recording well or pro's here about some mastering techniques to help out. The thing I tried was some basic compression to help boost the presence of some instruments (after De-mixing them) and then replacing them back into the Penteo mix. I'm starting to believe that in order for this album to ever sound it's best would take a solid engineer with knowledge of all types of compression and EQ to give this the boost it needs. As a shade tree up-mixer I really don't have the audio chops to deal with this properly; but that doesn't stop me from trying.

After some work on it, it's starting to at least bring out some interesting results of keyboards swirling around the channels etc. (hey, it's called Space Boogie, so it should have a slightly aggressive mix IMO ) There're also all sorts of little keyboard/synth elements that can still be isolated and re-mixed to give some more interest as well.

As far as the fantastic drumming on this by 'Simon Phillips' it has also made the drumming circle around the channels quite a bit also; now this I'm actually feeling pretty good about, because it feels like you're sitting in the middle of his drum kit.

About the only other thing I'd like to get punchier is 'Mo Foster's bass (maybe have it express itself from the Center channel as there's no vocals here.)

I do have one of the original 1980's US textured covered LPs I could rip and try (currently working with 96x24 files from HDtracks IINM.) But, I also heard there's a newer mastering from a 2020 40th anniversary issued by 'Friday Music' I may give a try with.

View attachment 93316

Good luck. I love this album. If I could have only one “we’ll create a surround mix of only one album for you” pick, this would be it.

I'm totally unqualified to give mixing/mastering advice, but I hope you come up with something that you love.

 

[sjcorne]

Speaking of drums etc., wasn't that one of Elliot Scheiner's main surround mixing axioms - "keep the rhythm section up front" (bass and drums)

I've come to prefer Steven Wilson's approach of putting some of the tom-toms partially or entirely into the rear speakers, it adds a little extra excitement especially during big fills going into a chorus.

 

[ar surround]

I've come to prefer Steven Wilson's approach of putting some of the tom-toms partially or entirely into the rear speakers, it adds a little extra excitement especially during big fills going into a chorus.

So, are you telling me that I'm sort of on the right track based on what I stated in Post #136 above? Or am I completely out of my mind again, as usual?

 

[J. PUPSTER]

So, are you telling me that I'm sort of on the right track based on what I stated in Post #136 above? Or am I completely out of my mind again, as usual?

that is a trick question and your mind is in constant Flux

however, there may be a vision of such things lurking out there ('YOUR' as in, our feeble up-mixes)

 

[J. PUPSTER]

I'm currently working on an 5.1 UDR for the Cornelius CD "ARISE Ghost In The Shell O.S.T."

This is one of the few songs on the album with vocals, and I can tell this will be a challenge to clean up and separate the vocals; and also figure out where I'd like to place them in the mix, as there are also some of it already thrown to the rears from the Penteo Up-mix.

Here are the whole song split waves for the Lead and Non-Lead Vocals for the song "I'm Not Here" (which is gonna be nuts when I'm finished!)

and here a small sample of this split attached below, where I put the Lead vocals on the left side stereo and right side for the Non-lead part; just so you can hear a little of what's going on in this song.

 

[zeerround]

Thanks for that. I'm a big Cowboy Bebop fan (and upmixed a lot of those OSTs) but was not aware of ARISE. Will have to go shopping...

 

[J. PUPSTER]

Thanks for that. I'm a big Cowboy Bebop fan (and upmixed a lot of those OSTs) but was not aware of ARISE. Will have to go shopping...

Here’s the version I’m working with, it separates stuff out really well.

https://www.discogs.com/release/4956427-Cornelius-Ghost-In-The-Shell-Arise-OST
I’ve actually got a lot more to learn about Cornelius releases, this one up-mixes really nicely.

 

[J. PUPSTER]

Getting an updated DeMix Pro today to install - Ver. 5.0.0; will have to work with it some and report back.

Anyone have any likes or dislikes to the new look or function of this new version?

 

[MixerRog]

I got a message from on of their designers that the stem separation has not changed but the interface has + he said it should run faster on
your local computer now also if you use it that way.

Rog

 

[ar surround]

I got a message from on of their designers that the stem separation has not changed but the interface has + he said it should run faster on
your local computer now also if you use it that way.

Rog

It does run faster in 'local' mode. Also, you can process multiple songs in local mode. For example, you can load up a whole album of songs, ask for Four Stem separation, go have dinner, then come back to download all of the stems. Multiple song stem separation can only be done in 'local' mode.

 

[J. PUPSTER]

Seems an update to version 5.1.0 was released today, with some bug fixes.

So far the prior 5.0.0 version was working pretty well for me.

Only thing that was bothersome for me, was when saving a De-mixed file, the extended file names generated could become too long (with my way of naming Up-mix files anyway with my shorthand descriptors.)

 

[MixerRog]

Seems an update to version 5.1.0 was released today, with some bug fixes.

So far the prior 5.0.0 version was working pretty well for me.

Only thing that was bothersome for me, was when saving a De-mixed file, the extended file names generated could become too long (with my way of naming Up-mix files anyway with my shorthand descriptors.)

They fixed the long file name issue which I had reported to them right away with version 5.0.

Rog

 

[ar surround]

Only thing that was bothersome for me, was when saving a De-mixed file, the extended file names generated could become too long (with my way of naming Up-mix files anyway with my shorthand descriptors.)

They fixed the long file name issue which I had reported to them right away with version 5.0.

They now give the option for the extended file names as an export option. I suppose that using the longer names is necessary when one is separating a whole album of songs (using the local separation mode) in one shot.

 

[nikomen]

Listening to the stereo source of Everywhere I do think they must be using the position in the stereo field (panning) to separate the backing vocals from the lead.

Lead is in the center, backing vocals are on the sides.

So, what you would do is first split the stereo using an upmix tool, one of mine or penteo, or just centercut, etc. Using whatever knobs are there just to get good separation between the lead, vs. backing vocals, then split those channels from the upmix and send them (separately) to the vocal separator software.

e.g. C --> separate vocals = lead vocal stem (or if you prefer c + fronts --> separate vocals = lead vocal stem) and rears --> separate vocals = backing vocals stem.

Hope that's clear.

On Everywhere I bet you could get at least three vocal parts that way, first upmixing and then sending C, fronts, and rears, separately to be vocal separated from the music.

However, I would point out that if you just sent the original stereo --> separate vocal = all vocals stem --> upmix you'd end up in the same place. So the above method probably is only needed if you wanted to pan the different vocal parts differently than where a straight upmix would place them.

Hey Glenn Long time no talk. Hey I have a question that maybe you know the answer to. I have upmixed about 110 albums with DeMix Pro, with really good results. I wanted to try to do the old early American Beatles albums, but it yields terrible results, so I was going to try to use the old script, Demucs + CC... app that a friend of yours made, which I think uses your SpecScript. I've had some really good results of in the past. I don't know if you've used it lately, but when I try to drop a FLAC, WAVE or ACC or MP3 on the "PrepFor Demucs.bat", it starts as usual, and opens the mvsep site, which does it's job and creates the 4 stems, which I them drop on the "Demucs" folder, and it starts to run, but almost immediately Sox v14.4.2 fails. Here are snapshots of one such example. Any ideas why it keeps failing, regardless of the file type I use?