Since posting copyrighted audio is prohibited here, I invite anyone who is interested to unmix “Have You Ever Seen the Rain” by CCR. This is one of those examples that, while bass isolation should be cut and dry, EZ-PZ, has instead slipped through the cracks when unmixed on ‘high’ setting with all other settings at default/nominal.
It seems as if a threshold is in place that ‘ignores’ any bass notes above a certain frequency if-and-only-if no lower frequencies are present to accompany them. If your results are anything like my own, you’ll notice that the verses contain deeper, richer notes of lower frequency. More importantly, however, the upper range notes are also present during each verse. As soon as a chorus comes into play, the bass line shifts to playing exclusively in that upper range and instantly becomes lost in (mostly) the “guitars” stem. This is somewhat baffling when compared to my first example from Green Day, which isolates both upper and lower ranges cleanly and evenly throughout the entire track.
In “Have You Ever Seen the Rain”, at least to the human ear, the bass is very clear and easily distinguished from other instruments, so it would seem that it should be an easier isolation than the Green Day track, but… not so much, go figure. In the CCR track the bass is lost in “piano” (I won’t even get into piano/key/synth --which is terrible-- in this thread, because it deserves it’s own topic), “guitar” and “other” stems, leaving massive gaps in the “bass” stem.
If ‘vocal’ stem isolation can be so incredibly good, I wonder why these other areas (keys, guitars, brass,synth,piano), and in this case, “bass” stems cannot achieve the same level of consistency and excellence.
Just to stay clear, I’m not here to beat up on SL, I write this to contribute to its improvement. I’m always excited to see what is in store for SpectraLayers as the future unfolds. This is technology that was unimaginable in the days of play/rewind/play/rewind/play. It’s easy to forget that fact and allow SL to become mundane/everyday but cheers to the minds that created it, and which keep making it better with each and every new version.
