Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1436283
M OT I O N P I CTU R E S O U N D E D I TO R S I 19 CO R N E R T EC H BY KOREY PEREIRA MPSE I have used music separation tools in the past and have never been happy with the results. Recently, I was introduced to RipX DeepAudio from Hit'n'Mix and was completely blown away by the results. In the simplest form, it can be used as a standalone tool or within Pro Tools using the included AudioSuite RipLink plug-in. I was recently doing a 5.1 mix for a feature film. The composer, Paul Apelgren, delivered stems for the score and worked wonderfully. There were a handful of live musical performances that all I had to work with was a stereo board feed of the performance. I needed to be able to match the vocals from the music track to production audio from the singer right before and after the performance. In this situation, I was able to send the stereo board feed to RipX DeepAudio, selected the "create stems" option and within minutes had the track split into four stems with the vocals, drums, bass, and an "other" for everything else. The separation of the drums and bass in particular were fantastic. The vocal stem was clean enough to futz to match the production audio in the scene. This is also a great way to isolate the vocals and hard-pan them to the center channel. With virtually no learning curve, I was able to create usable stems within minutes that saved the mix. Beyond creating simple stems, the software can be used to remove noise or incidental sounds from production tracks. For sound designers, you can use the Harmonic Editor to create unique sounds from parts of others or the Clone Pitch/ Sound Tool to transfer audio attributes such as pitch and timbre from one sound to another. If you really want to dig deep, you can use RipScripts to programmatically adjust/generate original sounds, and even process audio using data files, such as generated by motion capture. To find out a little more about this software, I spoke with the CEO & CTO of Hit'n'Mix & Neutron,