Back in March, Akai Pro unveiled MPC Stems, an upgrade that allowed MPC owners to separate mixed audio into individual stems for bass, drums, vocals and more.
There was a catch, though; MPC owners were required to hook up their samplers to their Mac or PC and access the stem separation via the MPC2 desktop software. Happily, this is no longer the case, as MPC Stems has finally become available for standalone MPCs.
This means that those who own standalone units such as the MPC Live, MPC One, and MPC X can now break open their samples with ease directly from the hardware interface, splitting samples up into stems to be further chopped, arranged and manipulated in their productions.
Powered by tech from Zplane, makers of the Peel Stems real-time stem separation software, MPC Stems generates four layers of stems from any recording: vocals, bass, drums and "other", which comprises other melodic elements not grouped into the other three stems.
Akai says the Zplane algorithm running on a standalone MPC will take roughly 22 seconds to separate a 10-second sample and 1 minute and 25 seconds to split up a 1-minute sample - these durations fall to 7 seconds and 25 seconds respectively when using the MPC2 desktop software.
Standalone MPCs use Zplane's Stems Efficient algorithm, while the MPC2 software makes use of Stems Pro, a higher-quality algorithm. While we haven't yet tested MPC Stems on a standalone MPC, reports are suggesting that the standalone stem separation is producing somewhat inconsistent results.
MPC Stems isn't a free update, and will set MPC owners back $9.99. However, those who have already purchased MPC Stems for use on their Mac or PC won't need to purchase it a second time to use it on their standalone MPC.
MPC Stems is supported by the following MPC hardware: MPC Live Series, MPC One, MPC One +, MPC X, MPC Xse, MPC Key 61, MPC Key 37, and MPC Studio Mk2.
