Balancing act

In the original Xtrax Stems, you could only mix the three stems as they were delivered by the separation algorithms, with no influence over their actual contents. Xtrax Stems 2 introduces the Separation Balance control: an easy-to-use system for “reorganising the energy within the mix in real-time”, applied after the separation algorithms have done their thing.

The control is a triangular X/Y-style ‘pad’, with each apex representing the Drum, Music and Vocals stems, and moving the central dot towards a stem increasingly isolates its content. Needless to say, this improvement in separation brings with it artefacts and audible ‘thinning’ of the target stem, as the process inevitably sends more and more of it to the other two stems, but Separation Balance is a very welcome addition to the software nonetheless, providing it with a much-needed degree of fairly extensive adaptability.