To my ears Virtual DJ sounds the best However, like you say, djay pro, Serato and Virtual DJ now all sound very good, to the point where the differences don't really matter anymore. So except for on Rekordbox, I really consider real time stems separation a solved problem in the DJ software that have those features - just like master tempo/time stretching, where I rarely hear discussions anymore on which one is better. They all just work
VDJ has been Sublime for 2 years or more. I have a whole eco system of remix songs, it's been that good since the introduction of Stems 2.0. Combined with all the other things you can do with VDJ, I will never look back.
I'm still puzzled how vdj is not respected in the industry but rekordbox is with them $#itty@$$ stems. Totally embarssing for a pioneer product. S/O to the team at VDJ for delivering on a consistent basis.
Virtual DJ's stems CDJ Export function is hands down the best option in any software. Also Virtual DJ has 5 stems instead of the others that have 4 or 3. I use Serato DJ as my daily driver, but stems on Virtual DJ is unmatched.
Virtual Dj, but i can hear leakage from other channels/instruments, underneath. Others were just too compressed for those used to studio quality audio. They'll get there. From NZ.
I can't believe VDJ is the only one that offers kick-only separation. The problem for me is that many times when I'm mixing in key, I would like to keep the bassline and the percussion going, but I wanna turn up the upcoming song. I kinda sorted it out on the FLX10 by applying a HPF for the drums only, but that already takes away the whole color fx section because you cannot use anything else but filtering, and beat fx is also limited because you can only use it for drums, as long as it is selected. With VDJ it's just a push of a button.
I can hear SO MANY James Hype opportunities being created and taken advantage of with this STEMS feature. It's the best thing the DJ industry has ever developed. Upwards and onwards from here on... 🙌🏻 🙌🏻🙌🏻🙌🏻🙌🏻🕺🕺🕺🕺🕺🕺🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
Long time Serato user: couple things… 1. As long as the drums won’t clash with what’s being blended, leaving the drums in with the acapella really helps the warbly sound. Otherwise it takes alot of eq’ing and reverb etc to try and get a clean vocal. 2. I haven’t been able to use anything higher than ver 3.0.2 on my 2020 MacBook Air (16gb ram/1tb SSD) because of the increased demand of gpu on video processing…Something that’s not widely discussed and I had to do some experimentation and reading between the lines on the recommended optimization found on Serato’s website. To run anything higher than 3.0.2 efficiently without lag or freezes, you need at least a 14 core gpu (which my 2020 only has 8 cores). Bit of a bummer when the 3.1 stems algorithm sounds cleaner but oh well… 🤷♂️
While mixing with STEMS, is there a FX you can apply to the acapella to make it sound even better? I sometimes use the echo, reverb and the recycler on 1/4 or 1/2, but anything else?
I still find if bafling how rekordbox can be so far behind everyone else in this. I switch to serato on my FLX10 from time to time and the difference in quality almost makes me want to switch entirely, it could be SO useful but the leakage is just so much worse than seratos
Great Video Phil. Can you let us know if your laptop used a dedicated video card? I know that it is required for Virtual DJ to use the better quality Stems 2.0. I use Virtual DJ and love their stems, but I agree Serato and DJ Pro all sounded great in your demo. They have really stepped up their game.
I’ve found that stems on Serato sound better when an original track is played, opposed to a Dj edit. especially the vocals and drums. Same with Serato Studio
I would be more than happy if InMusic decides to deploy the stems technology from their Akai line of products. It is offline (before playing any track) but on the machine itself and apparently with decent quality. So basically it stores the 4 stems as separate files. Memory is so cheap now that this is could be a viable option for self contained controllers like the prime 4 and sc4 (they use the same chipset as the akai products anyhow).
Agree on most things, especially the vocals. But one thing struck me instantly:.Serato kept so much more of that bass in the instrumental and drum & bass versions. All other contenders swallowed way too much of that.
Virtual DJ was the first to develop the feature and bring it to market, which is why the development of the software is the most mature here. But if you only want to use an iPad as a DJ platform, you can't avoid DJAY Pro
Would say VDJ and Djay Pro were equal with Serato coming in a close second,, Only thing I would give VDJ over Djay Pro is the biliary to have the extra stem separation.. I use Djay Pro and that plus their Fluid Beat Grid makes it the standout,, Obviously Pioneer is still industry standard and Djay Pro is probably 4th when is comes to Djay’s choice out of the 4 software platforms but for me personally, I don’t rely on club gear anymore so it doesn’t affect me as such…
I have been using stems a lot in a the past year but now more and more come to the conclusion that even the best stem separation like RipX just ruins the sound quality to a degree that I don’t want to use it anymore. It just doesn’t make sense to split stems from a mastered track.
As well as been a DJ for some 41 years and owning an IT/Tech company for 20 years, probably see me posting as athomepc as well, my two Pennys worth as I get many Dj's buying kit from me and I am in a fairly unique position to add to debate, I see hundred of peeps asking about which laptop, GPU, CPU etc, simple advice from me is buy a Mac, I am not an Apple fanboy, I am tech company owner and been a DJ for 2/3 of my existence and now produce and remix as well. An older refurbed Mac either Air Or Pro have Apple M1 chip 8-core CPU with 4 performance cores and 4 efficiency cores 7-core GPU, 8-core GPU, 16-core Neural Engine reference, not only that they have a 20 hour battery life, will interface with your iPad or iPhone, (Yes apple) and VDJ as a remote which is immensely useful when at the bar. A typical M1 refurb will cost approx about £700, hope this helps from a two prong perspective. A Mac will give you those juicy stems without breaking into a sweat.
You can't upgrade a Mac and you have to pay the extortionate Apple tax to get a workable amount of RAM and storage. I've recently upgraded my 2018 HP laptop with a 2TB SATA SSD next to the NVME boot drive. Imagine paying 920!!!!! EUROS extra on an already 1200+ costing laptop just to have a bigger SSD. I paid 135 euros or something for my Samsung 870 QVO. Ok, a slower SATA SSD drive but still, the SSD's Apple uses aren't THAT expensive to justify an upcharge of 700 euro's! And my 2016 laptop already has 16GB of ram. Apple asks... 230 EUROS! for 8 gigs on top of the original 8. Suddenly your 1300 euros MBA is 2500 euros... Just because you want a 2024 specced laptop. You can't defend this shit. 🤣 My laptop costed me 1000+135 euros in total. Fuck Apple. And yes, my 2018 laptop runs realtime stems fine.
@@IanDeVos From a DJ that uses one every day and Phill uses one, don't get mixed up discussing ram and performance, Macs use and borrow memory or whatever is needed and operate seamlessly , next question is, have you tried one, if the answer is no, you are not qualified to answer, I am, I own tech company and DJ and Produce
@@IanDeVos Also, I would not pay for Apples extortionate costs on storage, I use an external USB C NVME drive. Show me a Windows laptop that does 20 hours battery life.
@@discopauli I use an Apple MacBook Pro for work. And I had my own MacBook Pro in 2008. Until 2014 when I switched back to PC's. (Desktop with 32GB ram) In what way was my comment creased or whatever? Just because I said Apple sucks? Apple is a shit anti consumer company. They fuck their customers over and they keep swallowing it. And I don't want to use external hard drives. That's another thinking that can get stolen, broken, forgotten or fallen to the floor. And no, my laptop doesn't do 20 hours but it doesn't need to fit my use case. I never said ARM processors suck. But Apple as a company sucks. I don't give money to asshole companies like Apple.
Inhave no headphones on, and on my phone i can hear that Serato is best, and for those saying VDJ, if you listen closely it included the horns with the vocals, which will be bad if you dj via KEY…
like you said, Serato, Djay Pro,and VirtualDJ sound very similar, except for acapela, i think VDJ's approach is definitely better. For sure rekordbox is unusable.
Ugh, I hate that Rekordbox's stems suck so hard. I bought the FLX10 at launch and the stems in RB still suck as hard as they did at launch, 10 months ago. If it weren't for the fact that I don't like using Serato for other, more dealbreaking reasons I'd use that. And it's unfortunate that Pioneer DJ only included 3 buttons on the FLX10 as well. Only drums & bass stems would be nice. I kinda hope RB still gets 4 stems and you could double tap or shift tap on the Instruments button to have only the "instruments" removed but keep the bass.
To me Serato stems is much clearer in sound where as VDJ has a muffled sound but i have a mac book pro and windows And it sounds better on window than MacBook pro my opinion
So this is a good point. We use an M1 MacBook Air, which we think is a good representative laptop to test on - but agreed, different computers and specs may well affect sound quality.
100% agree with you… if your playing on a huge system it sounds crap…I’ve tried… thankfully I can get accapellas & instrumental version of the stuff I play… the sound is so much cleaner. Using RIPX works… but far to much shit to do to get a decent stem.
Thanks Phil for this comparison. Except rekordbox, they are all good. Stems quality also depends on the type of tracks you are playing. For this particular track VDJ was leaking some of the instruments. So not very good here. But in my Library i have found vdj to be better most times. You cant go wrong choosing either of the three for stems. Thanks again Phil! Im going to NAMM! Lol very exited.
![Best Music Streaming Services For DJs [2024 Edition]](/img/n.gif)
VDJ has the option to export stems! That’s clutch!!
It is
😮😮😮😮
To my ears Virtual DJ sounds the best
However, like you say, djay pro, Serato and Virtual DJ now all sound very good, to the point where the differences don't really matter anymore. So except for on Rekordbox, I really consider real time stems separation a solved problem in the DJ software that have those features - just like master tempo/time stretching, where I rarely hear discussions anymore on which one is better. They all just work
100% agree . . . The future is looking bright lol 😆 👌🏻
Well said
@@digitaldjtips Same here Klaus, the vocal grabs it, imo, VDJ
with stems VDJ is 100% up
Between VDJ and Serato test and DJay Pro 3 of them. But for me Virtual DJ that's just me :D. Keep up the great work.
We will!
That RANE Four 🤤
It's a beast!
VDJ has been Sublime for 2 years or more. I have a whole eco system of remix songs, it's been that good since the introduction of Stems 2.0. Combined with all the other things you can do with VDJ, I will never look back.
Virtual DJ too clean🔥🔥🔥
Djay 5 hands down
My thoughts as well
DJ Pro for sure because of how resource light it is and sounds just as good.
I'm still puzzled how vdj is not respected in the industry but rekordbox is with them $#itty@$$ stems. Totally embarssing for a pioneer product.
S/O to the team at VDJ for delivering on a consistent basis.
Virtual DJ's stems CDJ Export function is hands down the best option in any software. Also Virtual DJ has 5 stems instead of the others that have 4 or 3. I use Serato DJ as my daily driver, but stems on Virtual DJ is unmatched.
Still VDJ all the way
Virtual Dj, but i can hear leakage from other channels/instruments, underneath. Others were just too compressed for those used to studio quality audio. They'll get there. From NZ.
That's the compromise right now! But things are only improving...
I can't believe VDJ is the only one that offers kick-only separation. The problem for me is that many times when I'm mixing in key, I would like to keep the bassline and the percussion going, but I wanna turn up the upcoming song. I kinda sorted it out on the FLX10 by applying a HPF for the drums only, but that already takes away the whole color fx section because you cannot use anything else but filtering, and beat fx is also limited because you can only use it for drums, as long as it is selected. With VDJ it's just a push of a button.
believe it... lol
Like Serato Virtual DJ can also pre-process the stems, so you don't need quite as powerfull a laptop
Thanks for sharing that
Wow, Serato clears Rekordbox, but VDJ accapella was so much better than the others it's not even close.
I can hear SO MANY James Hype opportunities being created and taken advantage of with this STEMS feature. It's the best thing the DJ industry has ever developed. Upwards and onwards from here on... 🙌🏻 🙌🏻🙌🏻🙌🏻🙌🏻🕺🕺🕺🕺🕺🕺🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
It is, it's amazingly exciting to have this power in DJ software nowadays
@@digitaldjtips 🙌🏻👌🏻 100% , have a blessed 2024 Phil and the team. 🥂👍🏻
I guess I'll be patiently waiting for Rekordbox to improve on their stems.
We are sure they will
Long time Serato user: couple things…
1. As long as the drums won’t clash with what’s being blended, leaving the drums in with the acapella really helps the warbly sound. Otherwise it takes alot of eq’ing and reverb etc to try and get a clean vocal.
2. I haven’t been able to use anything higher than ver 3.0.2 on my 2020 MacBook Air (16gb ram/1tb SSD) because of the increased demand of gpu on video processing…Something that’s not widely discussed and I had to do some experimentation and reading between the lines on the recommended optimization found on Serato’s website. To run anything higher than 3.0.2 efficiently without lag or freezes, you need at least a 14 core gpu (which my 2020 only has 8 cores). Bit of a bummer when the 3.1 stems algorithm sounds cleaner but oh well… 🤷♂️
While mixing with STEMS, is there a FX you can apply to the acapella to make it sound even better?
I sometimes use the echo, reverb and the recycler on 1/4 or 1/2, but anything else?
I am a Rekordbox user, and the Rekordbox stems are underwater hahaha. My Ranking would be #1 Virtual Dj. #2Serato. #3 Djay Pro. #4 Rekordbox👎
Thanks for sharing
Djay pro 5 for me. Overall just sounds better. Plus on iOS the separation is instant.
We are very impressed with the speed of the stems on djay Pro too.
Virtual DJ Wins
Horaaayyyy I see the Rane Four!
I've been unimpressed with the Rekordbox stems as i find i can easily detect audible artifacts which is frustrating.
Yes, we are currently unimpressed too
@rekordbox - BOoooooooooooooooooo!!!!
Virtual DJ still ahead 👍🏽👍🏽👍🏽
Virtual DJ is great.. just the vocals are mixing with the other instruments which isnt too good but the drums and bass sound amazing
It's a compromise as we stated in the vid - go too far the other way and the vocals become muffled
Are these real time stems or prepared ones?
I still find if bafling how rekordbox can be so far behind everyone else in this. I switch to serato on my FLX10 from time to time and the difference in quality almost makes me want to switch entirely, it could be SO useful but the leakage is just so much worse than seratos
They know it. Hopefully not too long before an upgrade.
I use djay pro, On my iPad. It’s great for messing about and making mash ups from the comfort of the couch.
Great Video Phil. Can you let us know if your laptop used a dedicated video card? I know that it is required for Virtual DJ to use the better quality Stems 2.0. I use Virtual DJ and love their stems, but I agree Serato and DJ Pro all sounded great in your demo. They have really stepped up their game.
Macbook Air M1
@@digitaldjtips Apple M1 chip
8-core CPU with 4 performance cores and 4 efficiency cores
7-core GPU, 8-core GPU
16-core Neural Engine for reference
I’ve found that stems on Serato sound better when an original track is played, opposed to a Dj edit. especially the vocals and drums. Same with Serato Studio
Virtual DJ wins
The acapella is so much more clean than the rest, only if Serato could take that piece alone , stems would be so much cleaner
Definitely more cleaner sound
Not just that, you can adjust the intensity using the dials, so good
I would be more than happy if InMusic decides to deploy the stems technology from their Akai line of products. It is offline (before playing any track) but on the machine itself and apparently with decent quality. So basically it stores the 4 stems as separate files. Memory is so cheap now that this is could be a viable option for self contained controllers like the prime 4 and sc4 (they use the same chipset as the akai products anyhow).
Ive tested it myself and VDJ is the best option for this feature
We think most are excellent nowadays, all have pros and cons
VDJ 🎶🎶🎶
Can it stem any digital file. Such as 70s real instruments. Old disco etc.. what are the limitations. Thanks
Yes
I got Virtual Dj
man i need to look into virtual dj.
So what project were you working on with the club gear Sensei?
Please I want to know if it’s possible for me to use stems on virtual Dj 2020?
Akai coming soon will smash them all.
Very good presentation thanks 👍
You're welcome
I use NUO-STEMS 3 works great!!!
Yes, away from DJ software there are some great solutions
Djay 5.0
Agree on most things, especially the vocals. But one thing struck me instantly:.Serato kept so much more of that bass in the instrumental and drum & bass versions. All other contenders swallowed way too much of that.
It's a trade-off decision by the developers.
thanx a lot!
You're welcome!
Virtual DJ was the first to develop the feature and bring it to market, which is why the development of the software is the most mature here. But if you only want to use an iPad as a DJ platform, you can't avoid DJAY Pro
Djay Pro and VirtualDJ actually released it at the same time
Wow since this Tidal bomb got dropped on me where do I buy music from? The best spot to buy it for stems ?
Depends but iTunes store is a good start.
Tidal and Stems are back on VDJ
Serato user, but i reckon dj pro 5.0
They're definitely impressive!
Nuo Stems is the best!!! #TraktorPro
This is limited to Dj software real-time stems.
Would say VDJ and Djay Pro were equal with Serato coming in a close second,,
Only thing I would give VDJ over Djay Pro is the biliary to have the extra stem separation..
I use Djay Pro and that plus their Fluid Beat Grid makes it the standout,,
Obviously Pioneer is still industry standard and Djay Pro is probably 4th when is comes to Djay’s choice out of the 4 software platforms but for me personally, I don’t rely on club gear anymore so it doesn’t affect me as such…
Hobby DJs and Djay Pro do go well together, it's true.
@@digitaldjtips You’re right,
But don’t call Laid Back Luke a hobby dj😂,,
But rib him next time you see him 😂
Djay pro wins.serato runs high specs to operate stwm.but djay pro ai rin.on.2011 mac😊
djay Pro was the best and Serato DJ Pro was the second one. VirtualDJ was ok but Rekordbox was the worst unfortunately!
Where is stems on Engine OS?
Only in the beta on Prime 4+ at the moment.
Is Traktor Pro dead? 🙂
No
I have been using stems a lot in a the past year but now more and more come to the conclusion that even the best stem separation like RipX just ruins the sound quality to a degree that I don’t want to use it anymore. It just doesn’t make sense to split stems from a mastered track.
Fair enough
Has this improved yet?
What?
As well as been a DJ for some 41 years and owning an IT/Tech company for 20 years, probably see me posting as athomepc as well, my two Pennys worth as I get many Dj's buying kit from me and I am in a fairly unique position to add to debate, I see hundred of peeps asking about which laptop, GPU, CPU etc, simple advice from me is buy a Mac, I am not an Apple fanboy, I am tech company owner and been a DJ for 2/3 of my existence and now produce and remix as well. An older refurbed Mac either Air Or Pro have Apple M1 chip 8-core CPU with 4 performance cores and 4 efficiency cores 7-core GPU, 8-core GPU, 16-core Neural Engine reference, not only that they have a 20 hour battery life, will interface with your iPad or iPhone, (Yes apple) and VDJ as a remote which is immensely useful when at the bar. A typical M1 refurb will cost approx about £700, hope this helps from a two prong perspective. A Mac will give you those juicy stems without breaking into a sweat.
You can't upgrade a Mac and you have to pay the extortionate Apple tax to get a workable amount of RAM and storage.
I've recently upgraded my 2018 HP laptop with a 2TB SATA SSD next to the NVME boot drive. Imagine paying 920!!!!! EUROS extra on an already 1200+ costing laptop just to have a bigger SSD.
I paid 135 euros or something for my Samsung 870 QVO. Ok, a slower SATA SSD drive but still, the SSD's Apple uses aren't THAT expensive to justify an upcharge of 700 euro's!
And my 2016 laptop already has 16GB of ram. Apple asks... 230 EUROS! for 8 gigs on top of the original 8.
Suddenly your 1300 euros MBA is 2500 euros... Just because you want a 2024 specced laptop. You can't defend this shit. 🤣
My laptop costed me 1000+135 euros in total.
Fuck Apple.
And yes, my 2018 laptop runs realtime stems fine.
@@IanDeVos From a DJ that uses one every day and Phill uses one, don't get mixed up discussing ram and performance, Macs use and borrow memory or whatever is needed and operate seamlessly , next question is, have you tried one, if the answer is no, you are not qualified to answer, I am, I own tech company and DJ and Produce
@@IanDeVos Also, I would not pay for Apples extortionate costs on storage, I use an external USB C NVME drive. Show me a Windows laptop that does 20 hours battery life.
on another point this is DDJ tips post, I am being polite and informative, no need to for crass comments, be respectful to the channel.
@@discopauli I use an Apple MacBook Pro for work. And I had my own MacBook Pro in 2008. Until 2014 when I switched back to PC's. (Desktop with 32GB ram)
In what way was my comment creased or whatever? Just because I said Apple sucks?
Apple is a shit anti consumer company. They fuck their customers over and they keep swallowing it.
And I don't want to use external hard drives. That's another thinking that can get stolen, broken, forgotten or fallen to the floor.
And no, my laptop doesn't do 20 hours but it doesn't need to fit my use case.
I never said ARM processors suck. But Apple as a company sucks. I don't give money to asshole companies like Apple.
Dont they all use the same open source algorithm?
It's not only about the algorithm though, but yes, most use Demucs nowadays.
Inhave no headphones on, and on my phone i can hear that Serato is best, and for those saying VDJ, if you listen closely it included the horns with the vocals, which will be bad if you dj via KEY…
VDJ stems sometimes has pops/glitch sound on instrumental.
the power adapter just 5 dollars crap.Trial 500 dollars power supply, and make this video again!!!!!!!!!!!!!Sound just amazing!!!!!!
Rekordbox
Is embarrassing... 😂
Ha, we see what you did there
Virtual DJ
like you said, Serato, Djay Pro,and VirtualDJ sound very similar, except for acapela, i think VDJ's approach is definitely better. For sure rekordbox is unusable.
Yes, it is inferior - for the moment at least.
vdj much much better from the others
👍👍👍👍👍👍
VDJ will FNA be the King of Stems 🍒🤴🏽🫡
the irony of telling us to use our best headphones for a youtube video :)
In this instance they are fine for telling the difference between stems output
Serato! Plus Rane 4 is better than the rest
controller has no influence on separation quality
Lots of weird artifacts in the vocals from Rekordbox. That's a nope for me.
They've improved on Rekordbox, but not by much
DJ Pro by far
Denon isn’t even in the convo
Denon is a hardware maker, not a stems software provider
Ugh, I hate that Rekordbox's stems suck so hard. I bought the FLX10 at launch and the stems in RB still suck as hard as they did at launch, 10 months ago. If it weren't for the fact that I don't like using Serato for other, more dealbreaking reasons I'd use that.
And it's unfortunate that Pioneer DJ only included 3 buttons on the FLX10 as well. Only drums & bass stems would be nice. I kinda hope RB still gets 4 stems and you could double tap or shift tap on the Instruments button to have only the "instruments" removed but keep the bass.
I am in the world of Traktor. 😢😢😢
You can use Nuo Stems at the moment while waiting to real time stems on Traktor.
Traktor stems its true stems, another stems is just toy for kids, or for just stupid DJs
@@peeweeprimero1285 thank you. Given the quality of Traktor it will be interesting to see if Native Instruments develops a real time stems feature.
@@ortodoxcatolic I agree! The stems feature is nice. Just have to have the correct formatting of songs hence the recommendation to use Nuo Stems.
When you use it with the other things you won’t be able to hear that
Certainly often true
And still Virtual DJ wins
Rekordbox still sounds the worst for now
To me Serato stems is much clearer in sound where as VDJ has a muffled sound but i have a mac book pro and windows And it sounds better on window than MacBook pro my opinion
So this is a good point. We use an M1 MacBook Air, which we think is a good representative laptop to test on - but agreed, different computers and specs may well affect sound quality.
Im sorry but they are all terrible.. unusable for anything other than Bedroom DJs … offline processing is much better
They all suck!!! They lose the quality of the stems!!! Making your own stems from songs are 100% better!!
100% agree with you… if your playing on a huge system it sounds crap…I’ve tried… thankfully I can get accapellas & instrumental version of the stuff I play… the sound is so much cleaner. Using RIPX works… but far to much shit to do to get a decent stem.
I rather use the actual instrumentals & acapellas from my Serato music library to get creative..stems is like using the sync button haha
wow recordbox stems sound horrible, questionably unusable
They certainly need to improve to catch up with all the others
Thanks Phil for this comparison. Except rekordbox, they are all good. Stems quality also depends on the type of tracks you are playing. For this particular track VDJ was leaking some of the instruments. So not very good here. But in my Library i have found vdj to be better most times. You cant go wrong choosing either of the three for stems. Thanks again Phil! Im going to NAMM! Lol very exited.