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Comment by roddylindsay | Hacker News Reader

Once this technology gets incorporated into DJ mixers / CDJs, this is going to make DJing much more creatively interesting.

Historically, blending between mixed stereo tracks has limited to mixing EQ bands, but now DJs will be able to layer and mix the underlying stems themselves -- like putting the vocal from one track onto an instrumental section on another (even if there were never a capella / instrumental versions released.)

It also opens up a previously unreachable world for amateur remixing in general; for instance, creating surround sound mixes from stereo or even mono recordings for playback in 3D audio environments like Envelop (https://envelop.us) [disclaimer: I am one of the co-founders of Envelop]

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Disclaimer: my hobby is correcting people on the Internet when they say disclaimer but they really mean disclosure :)

How are those windmills doing, Don Quijote?

Hey, don't knock him. I'd never thought about it before. Being taught or corrected is great as long as people aren't dicks about it. Even then it has some value :)

I shall use this knowledge and endeavour to share it where possible.

Wouldn't it be much more efficient for everyone (and even lucrative for the owners) to also provide the studio stems at a slightly higher/different price?

(not that some of these are not already available when you know where to search, but it's not very... structured)

Native Instruments tried that with their Stems [0] project. Didn't seem to get all too far though.

[0]: https://www.native-instruments.com/en/specials/stems/

This one is proprietary to them.

The "open source" format/practice exists already: just bounce your mix into separate audio files, one for each track or group, into a folder, zip it, ship.

Only, it's not (yet) much embraced on the commercial side. When you pay up to 20 boxes to get a full album, why couldn't you pay, say, 100 to get the same album but with separated tracks for your own use + instructions as who to contact & how for any other kind of uses?

This is a thing specifically in the contemporary Christian music industry, so that churches can pick-and-choose parts from the original song to use as backing tracks for live performance. See e.g. https://www.multitracks.com/songs/Hillsong-Young-And-Free/Th...

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