Recording - October 2021 - 60

REVIEW
Your new tutor
Say you are trying to learn a
tricky part of a song. The separation
capabilities allow you to focus on each
instrumental part in greater detail,
making
RipX:
DeepAudio
practice and learning tool.
Craft a better mix
Hit'n'Mix RipX: DeepAudio
Stuck in same old grooves? Rip em' up...
REVIEW BY DAVID BLASCOE
H
it'n'Mix is the audio software company that brought us the awardwinning
Hit'n'Mix Infinity editor. Now there is a significant update
(free to existing users) called RipX: DeepAudio. It builds on what
made Hit'n'Mix Infinity so useful and powerful, upgrading it with workflow
improvements, audio separation, and added processing capabilities.
First glance
Upon first launching RipX: DeepAudio,
I was honestly a bit intimidated.
I was expecting, hoping really, for a
simple tool for separating a song into
stems to manipulate in my DAW of
choice. While it does do that very well,
DeepAudio is more of a DAW / editor
in its own right, complete with native
effects processing and full editing capability.
This entails a bit of a learning
curve, but it didn't take too long for me
to get comfortable.
Imported audio gets converted to
and stored in a proprietary format
optimized for the program; it's then
laid out on a vertical piano roll. This
charming animated display offers a
visual representation of the note values
(melodic content, harmonies and
drums). You can enlarge the graphic
representation of the notes and other
60 RECORDING October 2021
sounds and scroll through it as the
audio is playing. The broken-out stems
are organized on the vertical axis by
frequency range, with lower sounds on
the bottom and higher sounds on the
top. It all quickly begins making sense.
What does it do?
RipX: DeepAudio lets you separate
and edit already mixed stereo audio
files. Sounds straightforward enough,
right? The implications of this, however,
go further than you might think. One
obvious application is remixing, which
it does very well, and will probably be
why most users grab this program. You
can load in any number of songs and
separate each mix into various components
such as drums, bass, guitar, vocals
etc., and remix to your heart's content,
but the power of DeepAudio can be
used for so much more.
While reviewing DeepAudio, I was
hired to mix a live recording of a band,
and the vocal mic had an obnoxious
amount of drum and cymbal bleed in
it. While I have my usual go-to tricks
for reducing this, anybody who has
mixed a live recording understands
you can only do so much with high-frequency
cymbal bleed. I ran the vocal
track through DeepAudio and did some
tweaking, and I was impressed! Using
DeepAudio on the vocal mic was the
most effective method I've heard yet in
isolating the vocal and getting rid of
the majority of the drum and cymbal
bleed. It is a handy and powerful tool
for sound cleanup and restoration.
All in one
Beyond splitting audio into stems,
DeepAudio has a lot of impressive
capability built-in for editing and
transforming audio. You have your
usual suspects-reverb and delay, as
well as control over volume, EQ and
panning. But there are also powerful
pitch quantization features that remind
me of Melodyne for vocal tuning. This is
useful for completely mangling a vocal
line and creating a brand new melody.
There's an automatic harmonization
feature that works well and yields
pleasing results. From intervals to full
octaves up and down, it's a quick and
immediate way to
alter your audio.
These pitch and tuning features work
with any melodic content in addition
to vocals. Also present are highpass
and lowpass filters, pitch sliding,
vibrato and formant shifting functions,
and all parameters can be applied to
individual stems or the whole mix. Click
on the dice icon, and it will completely
randomize every one of these effects
for unpredictable results. There is a lot
of fun to be had here!
a great
Recording - October 2021

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