Unmix drums would work to separate kick, snare, toms, hats, cymbals, room/noise to different layers.
It would be good if the algorithm was as non destructive to transients for each separated element, and I think this could be done by smart-complex transient crossovers with a user controlled variable. For example, if a kick, a snare, and a tom all hit at once, each would have a blend of each others transient ranges.
Unmix Notation/Range would have two modes,
-complete frequency-notation separation to individual layers (with harmonics/and or synthetic harmonic reduplication?)
-Ranges - by octave, or, a “smart” mode. Smart would essentially figure out how many/different instrumentation ranges there are and separate them.
Zynaptiqs UnMix Drums, and Sonnox Drum Gate - are maybe two other good references of what can be accomplished. Actually this gives me idea for two different algos - one that separates drums as a whole into a single separate layer (akin to Zynaptiqs UnMix Drums), and a different algo meant for separating individual drum elements to their own layers (more akin to ReGroover or Sonnox Drum Gate).
I could see this being very useful for people who work with MediaBay and do loop based production, being able to break up a drum loop into different layers.
The ability to generate MIDI from even just the kick and snare hits from a full mix would be of enormous benefit.
When I must, I currently do this with a combination of Regroover and Melodyne (combined with a handful of filters and gates) and its time-consuming and painful, and slightly different for every project because the drum sounds (and mixes) vary. Even to be able to unmix “unmixed” drums would make the rest (generation of MIDI) very simple.
Not to distract from the subject at hand, but rather to expand on it: I think the unmix feature is already quite aligned with the remixing community, i.e. extracting individual instruments from complete mixes. A whole new client category is waiting in recording, where, for example, the ability to debleed individually “live-recorded” instruments - including drum set, and specific components of a drum set - would be an amazing, new tool.
Mic bleed is different to the complete stereo mixes that the unmix feature is currently trained for. A broadening here would be most welcome.