I have never been patient enough to really get to know how to use these spectrum manipulation programs, but the latest version of RX from iZotope caught my attention in an email they sent. It looked very interesting so I went in for the $150 and tried it out. It's pretty neat.
It's not perfection, at least with me at the helm, but it really makes it easy to do stuff like pull a vocal, remove a vocal, pull the drums, boost a sound, and even more. Since I've only had it for about 2 hours so far, I am sure there is much more to do with it, and I am also sure that a lot of you would be able to get a lot more out of this than me, but in my first adventure I created an upmix of "American Pie", as for some ungodly reason that tune was floating around in my head this weekend.
So, I totally isolated the vocal in the center. I then captured the drums, put them in the rears. Futzed around a bit with a few other controls and came out with this file. Check it out, if only to see what can be done with this program. Of course, if you solo the channels you'll hear all of the phasing and shit you get with SPEC and other manipulative programs, it's a far cry from working with stems or real multitracks, but it's FUN!! If you like this stuff, this is a worthy program to mess around with.
Here's a look at my finished wav file. The intro piano is nicely sounded in the fronts, the lead vocal exclusively and dry in the center. When the band section starts, I isolated the drums then reinserted them into the rears, removing them from the fronts. Hey, what the heck. Just call me Elliott!
It's not perfection, at least with me at the helm, but it really makes it easy to do stuff like pull a vocal, remove a vocal, pull the drums, boost a sound, and even more. Since I've only had it for about 2 hours so far, I am sure there is much more to do with it, and I am also sure that a lot of you would be able to get a lot more out of this than me, but in my first adventure I created an upmix of "American Pie", as for some ungodly reason that tune was floating around in my head this weekend.
So, I totally isolated the vocal in the center. I then captured the drums, put them in the rears. Futzed around a bit with a few other controls and came out with this file. Check it out, if only to see what can be done with this program. Of course, if you solo the channels you'll hear all of the phasing and shit you get with SPEC and other manipulative programs, it's a far cry from working with stems or real multitracks, but it's FUN!! If you like this stuff, this is a worthy program to mess around with.
Here's a look at my finished wav file. The intro piano is nicely sounded in the fronts, the lead vocal exclusively and dry in the center. When the band section starts, I isolated the drums then reinserted them into the rears, removing them from the fronts. Hey, what the heck. Just call me Elliott!
Last edited:
