Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1469840
C A S Q U A R T E R L Y I S U M M E R 2 0 2 2 73 I found the Bass stem pretty interesting in both of these songs. As we know, bass is usually panned center—and it is in both of these songs. However, with RX and SpectraLayers, there is noticeable stereo imaging at points (see screenshots). RipX kept the imaging pretty tight in the phantom center. Another characteristic of the Bass stem is the steep low pass filter applied. The filter used in RipX seemed to have the lowest order while RX seems to brickwall around 3 kHz. The Bass stem in RipX still has a little "attack" that's audible, as well. The sonic characteristic of the RX and SpectraLayers stems, however, are akin to hearing a bass playing down the hall behind a closed door; very much fundamental-focused. The Vocal stems also had a little added spatial quality. During the verse, RipX was the "most mono" with the other two having a little "spread" that sounds like a light stereo chorus was added with about a 20 percent width. For the panned vocal chorus, the Vocal stem was cleanest with RipX. RX and SpectraLayers had audible Chamberlin and a little percussion in the Vocal stem. Impressively, all retained accurate panning. The separate Piano stem available in the SpectraLayers split was interesting in that it seemed to have a brickwall filter at 5 kHz and, as a result, came across as a little dull. When adding the Other stem to it (which contained the Chamberlin and would be equivalent to the Other stem from the two additional programs), the result still wasn't as spectrally full as the Other stem in RX. The Other stem in RipX had some noticeable pumping on this particular track. Processing music with these plugins is like going down a wormhole where you want to process all of your favorite songs and listen to all of the individual stems. Across both of these songs, some of the stems could stand by themselves, while some needed additional elements to mask some of the imperfections such as bleed or noticeable artifacts. Some of the sound quality reminded me of early lossy codecs, but once blended together, came across pretty well. If I was doing lots of music separation, I would pick The Other stem from Fiona Apple's "Fast As You Can," along with the additional SpectraLayers Piano stem.