After the VocalRip AI review, readers sent me links to several similar programs and asked me to make a comparison. One of them was Simple Stems, which costs $70. Is it worth paying extra for it?
Immediately after seeing the screenshot on their website, I didn’t want to install this program, but I did it anyway.
Main features
So, another product designed to separate music sources.
This time I’ll start with the installation process. The installer takes up 194MB, but after installation it downloads the models and the total size is close to 300MB. What’s inside? There is nothing superfluous in the program folder, and individual components are scattered throughout the disk, including the Windows folder. This is unsafe and extremely unprofessional. As a result, it turned out that the program uses the Demucs model without any changes.
At the moment, this model is far from the leaders and does not offer anything outstanding in terms of performance. Moreover, there are several free and open source GUIs for this model. What are we asked to pay for?
Interface
One look at that murky brown-green interface is disgusting. Are you serious?
Additional features
Perhaps all the most interesting things will be in this section.
The program has a sufficient set of settings, presets and separation options. In this regard, no complaints. The individual tracks appear in a list with a waveform preview and player. Full drag’n’drop support allows you to share tracks with other applications. Well, quite convenient.
Also, the program can work as a VST/AU plugin, which can be considered an undeniable advantage.
There is hardware acceleration, it requires a CUDA-enabled video card from Nvidia. The operating speed is similar to pure Demux.
Conclusion
What will be the verdict? The quality of separation can be improved by training your own models or borrowing them from competitors. This is quite easy to do. But with the interface the problem is of a fundamental nature. I’ve looked at other StageCraft products and they all look the same. They can’t do it without a new designer.