Lossless stems

axeldelafosse · 2024-07-21T22:13:07+00:00

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Hi everyone,

Thank you so much for the release of Traktor Pro 4. I appreciate all the hard work that went into the new version and I'm happy to share that I successfully upgraded without any issue.

The only thing missing now is the ability to save lossless stem files in ALAC instead of lossy stem files in AAC. IMO it should be a setting for users who consider storage a commodity and for which quality isn't a tradeoff. You are going in the right direction and might be the only player positioned to deliver high-quality stems for DJs. People deserve (and expect) to hear lossless audio — in 2024 we shouldn't have to compromise on quality vs storage.

Here is a related thread linking to an issue with lossless stems on Windows:

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/13298/lossless-stems-on-windows

This is needed by legendary DJ François K and will enable world-class DJs to take this feature seriously.

You are a step closer to winning the stems war… you are almost there! Please fix the ALAC issue on Windows and please enable users to save ALAC stem files!

Thanks,
Axel

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Comments

RobAky92

I second this. A much requested feature and I hope it sees recognition soon.

Sûlherokhh

Yes.

You best place this in the new ideas/suggestion section as soon as it is opened up again.

Simon A. Billington

AAC is lossless, or at least, it can be. It was originally designed for that purpose.

Maybe Apple rebranded AAC Lossless as ALAC for marketing purposes so it wouldn't get confused with the lossy form of AAC??

RobAky92

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/167129#Comment_167129

I'm no expert on the matter but I am almost certain that this is untrue. Due to the way it's encoded, AAC is arguably better than a 320kbps MP3, but in no way does it objectively compare to an ALAC/FLAC.

Transmission.today

High-quality audio is the cornerstone of the audiophile experience. FLAC and ALAC files play seamlessly on Windows, showcasing the system's potential.

Delivering the same impeccable quality on both PC and Mac is key. This vision aligns with the core values of innovation and quality that audiophiles cherish.

There is a clear difference between a 1411 kbps bitrate and a 256 kbps audio track. The difference is significant!

I fully support this and upvote this !

Nico_Tf

Oh yes, lossless stems are needed, but, more generally, being able to link another stem file than the one generated by Traktor would be great. I love the integration of cue points and the ability to switch to either the original or the stem version by double dropping in another deck, it makes stems finally functional for me.

So far, I’ve tried to replace the stems from Traktor by hunting them in the stems folder, listening to them to identify them, copying the name, and replacing the file and pasting the name. It works great, only thing being the offset from the start is different, and so the grid and cue points are a bit off.

This is going to be the main stumbling block for easily implementing this feature. I guess NUO could be coaxed into adapting his great software so that it produces stems with the right offset, as he has been working on offset problems recently.

He could even manage to do NI job and automate reading the collection, identifying the stem to be replaced, generating a lossless, high quality demucs stem and replacing the original file I guess.

lord-carlos

I wonder why they don't yet support alac on windows. AFAIK windows has a de-coder, just like AAC.

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/167129#Comment_167129

More or less transparant, at least for most people. But not lossless. That is ALAC and flac.

axeldelafosse

being able to link another stem file than the one generated by Traktor would be great

Agreed! I'd love to be able to do that too.

You can probably modify the collection.nml file yourself — this is what I do: cf. stemgen for example, in the stemtag script (I'm setting the grid and cue points on the stem file and then copying the metadata over to the original file, it's not perfect but it works for me).

But tampering with the collection isn't ideal, it would be better to have an official solution for linking files and having them share the same metadata.

Nico_Tf

FYI: Tried it a bit differently, with the 3.0.0 of NUO Stems this time, not the beta. Generated a lossless stem, replaced the NI stem with the NUO one, works like a charm, no offset.

So, NI, if you’re listening, you just have to allow us to link an external file as a stem to make (probably a very few of us) happy!

axeldelafosse

There is a clear difference between a 1411 kbps bitrate and a 256 kbps audio track. The difference is significant!
I fully support this and upvote this !

Thank you for your support.

Note that Demucs (which is what iZotope RX is using) also support 24-bit audio files!

axeldelafosse

I wonder why they don't yet support alac on windows

It's clearly a bug. The licence is royalty-free and the code is open-source — there is no reason why it wouldn't work… I raised the issue here: https://github.com/NativeInstruments/ni-media/issues/67. but never got any response.

Sûlherokhh

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/167170#Comment_167170

Interesting.

axeldelafosse

More or less transparant, at least for most people. But not lossless. That is ALAC and flac

Not on a big sound system… And yes exactly, AAC is a lossy compression codec like MP3. ALAC and FLAC are lossless compression codec, you can think of them as ZIP.

lord-carlos

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/167175#Comment_167175

Oh, they indeed have code in the windows media foundation thing about ALAC.

// Alac is only defined in widows10 sdk and higher
#ifndef MFAudioFormat_ALAC
DEFINE_MEDIATYPE_GUID( MFAudioFormat_ALAC, 0x6C61 );
#endif

axeldelafosse

Just found out that Mixxx started to implement stems based on the Native Instruments spec, and they support lossless stems: https://github.com/mixxxdj/mixxx/issues/13116

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