Tags: posts polarity-music Bitwig Bitwig-5.2b5 Tutorial zplane

Peel Stems: Real-Time Stem Separation Plugin - Review and Demo

Tutorial | Jun 05, 2024

In the video, I talk about zPlane's new plugin called Peel Stems, which is an updated version of their previous plugin, Peel. It allows you to separate stems in real-time or adjust their volume using the drums, bass, vocals, and other knobs. I demonstrate its effectiveness by showcasing examples with various tracks, highlighting its ability to separate stems even in heavily processed and compressed masters.

You can watch the Video on Youtube - support me on Patreon - Peel Stems product page

zPlane released a new plugin called Peel Stems, an update to their old spectral filtering plugin, Peel. Peel Stems features four new knobs for drums, bass, vocals, and other, enabling real-time stem separation and volume adjustment. I tested it in Bitwig, and while it introduces some latency and spectral artifacts, it's impressive for real-time processing within a DAW.

Key Points:

Overall, Peel Stems is a versatile tool for music producers needing real-time stem separation directly in their DAW.

Questions & Answers

Maybe you dont watch the video, here are some important takeaways:

What is the new plugin called Peel Stems?

Peel Stems is a new plugin by zPlane that is an update to the old Peel plugin. It allows for spectral filtering and has four new knobs for drums, bass, vocals, and other, which allows for real-time stem separation or volume control.

How much does the Peel Stems plugin cost?

The crossgrade for Peel Stems costs $20, while the price for new customers is around $40. Overall, it is considered to be an affordable plugin.

How does Peel Stems perform in real-time stem separation?

Peel Stems performs impressively in real-time stem separation, although there are some spectral artifacts such as pre-ringing and smearing. It has a latency of around 400 milliseconds, so it's not suitable for real-time use with live performance, but it is still very useful within a DAW.

What types of songs work best with Peel Stems?

Peel Stems works best with highly dynamic materials such as pop songs or classic songs from past decades. It is particularly effective for extracting vocals from tracks like these.

Transcription

This is what im talking about in this video. The text is transcribed by AI, so it might not be perfect. If you find any mistakes, please let me know.
You can also click on the timestamps to jump to the right part of the video, which should be helpful.

[00:00:00] So, zPlane just came out with a new plugin called Peel Stems.
[00:00:04] It looks like this here on the right side.
[00:00:06] It's basically an update to the old Peel plugin, which was a spectral filtering plugin, and
[00:00:11] they added four new knobs here called drums, bass, vocals and other.
[00:00:17] And which means you can separate stems in real time or turn down the volume in real
[00:00:22] time.
[00:00:23] And when I first heard this, I couldn't believe it, so I had to try this out.
[00:00:26] And I want to give you here some examples in this video.
[00:00:31] I think the crossgrade only costs 20 bucks, and if you are a new customer, it costs around
[00:00:36] 40 bucks, so it's not very expensive.
[00:00:39] So inside of Bitwig here, I have this already loaded up on the master.
[00:00:44] Okay.
[00:00:45] So I give you here an example for this track.
[00:00:47] I let this play.
[00:00:48] So let's just remove everything except the drums, right?
[00:01:03] And you can hear there are some spectral artifacts, but this is, you know, you get this with every
[00:01:09] stem separation plugin because it's a spectral process and you have some pre-ringing, you
[00:01:14] have some smearing in there.
[00:01:16] Bitwig doesn't get better.
[00:01:46] In my opinion, this is pretty impressive in real time.
[00:01:49] I mean, it's not really real time.
[00:01:51] You have a latency here of, let me see.
[00:01:55] Can we see this actually here?
[00:01:57] Around 400 milliseconds latency.
[00:02:00] So you're, every all plugins together have basically 600 milliseconds of latency.
[00:02:06] So there's a bit of lag in there, so you can't really use this in real time, like you play
[00:02:10] on the keyboard, right?
[00:02:11] And then you filter out in real time everything.
[00:02:14] That's, that's not really possible, but you still don't need to leave the door.
[00:02:18] You can do this in the door basically and play around here with the knobs and try to
[00:02:23] separate stuff.
[00:02:25] You can see here it's on the master.
[00:02:27] It's after limiting and compressing and also hard clipping here.
[00:02:32] So there's a lot of processes going on and still does a decent job, in my opinion, to
[00:02:37] separate these things here, right?
[00:02:40] We can also go here into another project.
[00:02:44] It's also a track of mine.
[00:02:45] It's also heavily compressed and limited, but there are some vocals in there.
[00:02:51] So let's try this out here on this one.
[00:02:53] Also here, in my opinion, it's books very well.
[00:03:23] If you keep in mind, this is in real time and also this track or this master is heavily
[00:03:30] compressed and clipped.
[00:03:32] And also there's a lot of reverb on the vocals in there.
[00:03:35] I worked a lot with side chain compression and so on.
[00:03:39] So it's a very heavy task for such a tool to do this in real time, but still it works
[00:03:44] very well, in my opinion.
[00:03:47] I think this works the best if you use, let's say, highly dynamic materials, so songs, pop
[00:03:55] songs or classic songs from the 80s, 70s, 60s and so on and extract vocals from these
[00:04:04] kind of tracks.
[00:04:05] I mean, I could show you this in this video, but then the video probably get flagged for
[00:04:10] a copyright.
[00:04:11] So I can't really show you this.
[00:04:13] I can only show you this here on my own tracks.
[00:04:16] Okay, here's another example I'm using here a song by Gatwick called Carousel.
[00:04:23] Sounds like this.
[00:04:32] And also you use this fader to increase the separation precision.
[00:04:58] So I guess lower values are basically more forgiving and yeah, this is highly precise.
[00:05:04] So it tries to really curve out everything.
[00:05:16] Let's try to see on the intro maybe.
[00:05:39] You can still hear the reverb from the vocals, but this is expected, I guess.
[00:05:48] But if you have this master basically here or this mp3 in your collection and you think
[00:05:53] oh well, the vocals are way too quiet, right?
[00:05:55] So you put this on and just turn up here the volume just by 60B or turn everything down
[00:06:02] and then you get more of the vocals.
[00:06:21] So yeah, it's not perfect, but it's in real time.
[00:06:24] You can use it in any DAW.
[00:06:25] You don't need to use an external software, external application, import the track, export
[00:06:30] the stems, import it back into the DAW.
[00:06:33] You can basically play around with this here inside of your current DAW and then bounce
[00:06:39] it to another track or just remix it here or change the volume of certain stems.
[00:06:45] So it's probably any tool I have to play around with this here a bit more to get some experience
[00:06:51] with it.
[00:06:52] But I want to let you know that this plug in has just came out.
[00:06:55] Maybe there's a demo or trial version on the website.
[00:06:57] I have no idea.
[00:06:58] I put you the link in the description below.
[00:07:00] I'm not affiliated.
[00:07:01] By the way, I just saw this in my inbox and yeah, I thought I'd give it a try.
[00:07:08] So thanks for watching.
[00:07:09] Leave a like if you liked the video.
[00:07:12] Subscribe to the channel.
[00:07:13] Leave me feedback of course in the comments down below.
[00:07:15] Thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next video.
[00:07:17] Bye.