Deezer introduces Spleeter, a free tool that anyone can use to create stems from stereo audio files

Music streaming service Deezer is the latest company to introduce a technology that’s designed to separate mixed stereo audio files, and the good news is that anyone can use it for free.

Spleeter is described as a “state-of-the-art source separation algorithm,” and Deezer is confident that the results you can get with it match anything that’s already out there. We’ve already seen the likes of the Music Rebalance feature in iZotope’s RX7, and Audionamix’s Xtrax Stems is completely dedicated to breaking tracks apart.

The diagram above illustrates how Spleeter works - though not in any technical detail - and it promises to operate 100 times faster than real-time when doing its processing. What’s more, because Spleeter is open-source, you can use it in any way you like, although, obviously, there are copyright implications to breaking apart commercial material and remixing them.

On the downside, although anyone can access Spleeter via GitHub, there’s no graphical interface, though we’re told that the separation can be achieved using a single command line, which is something.

What’s more, it seems likely that other applications that use the Spleeter algorithm will start to turn up; in fact, a web-based solution known as Moises is already online.

Early indications are that, to a certain extent, Spleeter does work as promised, though Deezer is keen to stress that it isn’t claiming to have ‘solved’ source separation, and that there’s still a lot of work to be done. Tools like this are definitely a step in the right direction, though, and are only going to get better.

Find out more on the Deezer website.