Isola Pro FXUser Manual

V1.2

www.lakeside-audio.de

Contents1. License Agreement ...........................................................................................................32. Product Liability .................................................................................................................42.1 Third party copyright notice .............................................................................................43. Overview ...........................................................................................................................54. System requirements ........................................................................................................65. Installation instructions and licensing................................................................................66. Controls description...........................................................................................................77. How to use the „frequency mode“ .....................................................................................98. How to use the „MIDI mode“ ...........................................................................................109. Contact and purchasing...................................................................................................12

1. License Agreement

Please read the license agreement of this license contract carefully, before you install the software.By the installation of the software you agree to the conditions of this license contract. This software-license agreement, in the following called as "license", contains all rights and restrictions for final users that regulate the use of the accompanying software, operating instructions and other documents, in the following called as "software".

1. This license contract is an agreement between Licensor and Licensee, who is being licensed to use the named Software.

2. Licensee acknowledges that this is only a limited nonexclusive license. This means that thelicensee has no right to allocate sublicenses. Licensor is and remains the owner of all titles,rights, and interests in the Software.

3. The software is a copyright property of Lakeside Audio. The program or parts of it may not be further licensed to third parts, rented, sells, or be further marketed, otherwise, in any form without explicit written approval by Lakeside Audio. The user may neither change the software and their components, modify nor, otherwise, redevelopment or decompile in any form.

4. This Software is subject to no warranty. This software is sold as is, without any warranty. If at any time, a user changes their system, we hold no responsibility to change our software to make it work again.

5. This License permits Licensee to install the Software on more than one computer system, as long as the Software will not be used on more than one computer system simultaneously. Licensee will not make copies of the Software or allow copies of the Software to be made by others, unless authorized by this License Agreement. Licensee may make copies of the Software for backup purposes only. Licensee not entitled to transmit or to transfer the software or your rights from this License agreement.

6. LICENSOR IS NOT LIABLE TO LICENSEE FOR ANY DAMAGES, INCLUDING COMPENSATORY, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, EXEMPLARY, PUNITIVE, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES, CONNECTED WITH OR RESULTING FROM THIS LICENSE AGREEMENT OR LICENSEE’S USE OF THIS SOFTWARE.

7. Licensee agrees to defend and indemnify Licensor and hold Licensor harmless from all claims, losses, damages, complaints, or expenses connected with or resulting from Licensee’s business operations.

8. Licensor has the right to terminate this License Agreement and Licensee’s right to use this Software upon any material breach by Licensee. duration of the license contract is indefinitely determined.

9. Licensee agrees to return to Licensor or to destroy all copies of the Software upon termination of the License Contract.

10. This License Agreement replaces and supersedes all prior negotiations, dealings, and agreements between Licensor and Licensee regarding this Software.

11. This License Contract is subject to german law. 12. If a regulation of this license contract is void by law, the validity of the remaining regulations

is not affected. If there is such a regulation it will be replaced by a valid, according to the legal regulations and enforcable regulation with similar intention and similar economic consequences.

13. The license contract is effectve by delivery of the software of the licensor to the lecensee and/or by usage of the software by the licensee. This License contract is also valid without Licensor’s signature.

14. The license automatically goes out if the licensee does not agree to the license regulations described here or offend against the license regulations of this license contract. With ending the license contract the licensee is obliged to extinguish all copies of the software orto destroy it.

15. The Licensee sticks for all damages which originates the licensor from the injury of these license regulations.

2. Product Liability

For all offers, sales and supplies do explicit apply the following conditions, even if the buyer, orderer and suchlike prescribes other conditions. Alterations are only valid, if they are agreed in writing.

1. The technical documentation is part of the products. The product liability and the product guarantee will be excluded, if contents and in particular the safety references and instruction for action of the documentation are not considered.

2. Application of the product takes place at one’s own risk. 3. The liability of the substitution of damages according to §1 product liability law, is expressly

excluded in the context of §9 product liability law, as far as compelling legal terms do not provide anything else. In no event will the producer be liable for any indirect, incidental, special or consequential damages, including loss of profits, loss of revenues, loss of data, loss of use, any other economic advantage or damages caused by pretensions of third party towards the customer out of this agreement, under any theory of liability, whether in an action in contract, strict liability, tort (including negligence) or other legal or equitable theory.

4. The burden of proof is with the customer. 5. Lakeside Audio does ensure the legal warranty according to German law. Except for

warranties expressly set forth in this agreement, any and all products are delivered “as is” and the producer makes and the customer receives no additional express or implied warranties. The producer hereby expressly disclaims any and all other warranties of any kind or nature concerning the products, whether express or implied, including without limitation, any warranty of title, merchantability, quality, accuracy, or fitness for a particular purpose or the customer’s purpose. The producer expressly disclaims any warranties that may be implied form usage of trade, course of dealing, or course of performance, except forthe express war-ranties stated in this agreement. The products are provided with all faults, and the entire risk of satisfactory quality, performance, accuracy, and effort is with customer. The producer does not warrant that the Products will operate without interruption or be error free.

6. Lakeside Audio is justified to exchange defective goods against homogeneous acceptable ones or to eliminate the fault within an appropriate period. In this case a demand for redhibitory action or reduction of price expires. Warranty claims presuppose a due notice ofdefects.

7. Resale, transfer, donation, exchanges or the rental of the offered products at third party, is not permitted without clearance of Lakeside Audio.

8. The customer is not allowed to use the product to be in violation of the copyrights of the owner of any material like audio recordings processed by the software.

9. German Law is deemed to be as legal basis.

2.1 Third party copyright notice VST is a registered trademark of Steinberg Media Technologies GmbH.

Mac and Audio Units are registered trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc.

Windows is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation.

3. Overview

Isola Pro FX is an innovative and new audio plugin for separating audio input material into its components. Unlike many other products using simple left and right channel subtractionmethods, the underlying algorithm works in real time by using psychoacoustic analysis. Sofor example it is even possible to extract lead vocals from a song that has a very dense mix.

Please note that the quality of the result depends much on the input material - with most songs, Isola Pro FX really works pretty good, but with very dense and noisy mixes with lots of instruments it might reach its limitations.

Another great advantage compared to state of the art products is the fact, that you can extract any feature from a mix you want in real time, so the tool is not restricted to vocals only but can even extract single instruments like guitars from an audio mix.

To achieve this, two operation modes are available.

There is a simple „frequency mode“, where you only select a frequency band and the plugin tries to find harmonic material within to isolate it. This mode works fairly good with simple audio material that already has a good separation between different components.

To get better results with more complex mixes, you need to work a little bit harder and have to use the MIDI mode. It is true that other solutions might be somewhat better with their automatic modes, but with using the MIDI mode and spending some effort you will be able to extract almost any material you like. With the MIDI mode, you have to create a miditrack holding the corresponding notes of the vocals or instruments to be isolated.

It is clear that the output of the plugin doesn´t reach the quality of an original acapella track, but it is perfectly usable for processing it further within remixes, for example.

Please have also a look at the tutorial:

https://youtu.be/qRpfrtoDcgs

Restriction of the demo version:

The demo version only supports the frequency mode and silences the output after using it for 10 minutes. The „mix back“ mode is not available.

4. System requirements

At the moment Isola Pro FX V1.2 supports Microsoft Windows 7 and greater with the following variants:

• VST3 plugin 64 bit• VST2.4 plugin as a dll file for 32 and 64 bit systems

It has been developed and tested with Steinberg Cubase 8.5 and Audacity (32 bit dll version). It should also work with Reaper 64 bit.

A MAC version will be available soon, please contact as for testing pre-releases!

5. Installation instructions and licensingIsola Pro FX v1.2 is delivered as a ZIP-file containing the following items:

• VST3 plugin „Isola.vst3“ in folder „plugin“:For Steinberg Cubase on 64 bit systems, please copy this file into your VST3 plugin folder (mostly to be found in C:\Program Files\Common Files\VST3\Steinberg)

• VST2.4 plugin „isolaprofx32.dll“ in folder „plugin“:This is for 32 bit applications like Audacity, please copy it into the appropriateplugin folder (should also work with many other DAWs like Ableton)

• VST2.4 plugin „isolaprofx64.dll“ in folder „plugin“:This is for 64 bit applications which do not support vst3 plugins yet.

• This document

• A cubase 8.5 example project using the vst3 variant, to be found in folder „IsolaProFXDemo“

In Cubase the vst3 plugin can be found in the „Others“ section of your DAW.

Isola Pro FX is protected with a node locked license bound to the MAC address of the first network adapter in your system. If you experience any problems or want to migrate to a new host, please get in touch with webmaster@lakeside-audio.de.

6. Controls descriptionIn this chapter all the controls are specified. Of course all controls can be automated.

bypass

Turning to position „on“ will bypass the effect.

MIDI

Turning to position „on“ will enable the MIDI mode, in position „off“ the frequency mode is enabled.

tracking

Only available in frequency mode. In position „on“ the algorithm will try to follow the currentharmonic feature. The result might sound a little bit smoother, but in very dense mixes the algorithm could also be misdirected. Just try it!

remove

With this option activated, the isolated harmonic output will be inverted, that is the isolated feature will be subtracted from the output. If you´re tracking vocals, with this option you can generate a somewhat good instrumental version (along with using the „mix back“ function), but this is not the main purpose of the plugin.

drum detect

This control enables a pre-filter to remove all percussion-like content from the input.For most situations it is recommended to enable this option, but it will introduce a delay of about 1 second to the output, since this powerful option needs some pre-processing. Please regard that the corresponding MIDI notes in the MIDI mode will not be synchronized after turning on this feature. So when you use the MIDI mode you should leave the drum detect option activated from the beginning.

mix back

With this option – which is only available when „drum detect“ is activated - you can add all percussive and drum-like parts of the input back to the output. So if you want to extract drums and percussion-like sounds of any audio material, you have to enable „drum detect“and increase the „mix back“ setting. It will be mixed along with the isolated sounds. If you want to get the drums only you can choose the MIDI mode without any notes played and increase „mix back“. You can generate a „karaoke“ like output if you´re isolating the vocals and use the „remove“ function along with „mix back“.

harmonic

With „harmonic“ the width of the harmonic spectrum of the isolated material can be controlled. With lower settings you will get only the lower overtones and it will sound a littlebit muffled, but with higher settings there could remain unwanted artifacts. tolerance

This control is used to set the tolerance of selecting harmonic overtones belonging to a certain voice or instrument. Keep it on the left side to reduce artifacts or increase the setting when the result sounds unnatural.

balance

Isola Pro FX is a mono plugin. With the „balance“ setting you can select the stereo positionto be fed into the algorithm.

center

This control is used to select the center frequency of the frequency band used for the frequency mode.In the MIDI mode, all input which is below the selected frequency band (by center and band width control) will be skipped.

band width

With this control you can change the width of the frequency band located around the „center“ setting. Within the selected frequency range, the algorithm will try to isolate harmonic material.In the MIDI mode, all input which is below the selected frequency band (by center and band width control) will be skipped.

7. How to use the „frequency mode“

In the frequency mode the algorithm will try to isolate harmonic material within the choosenfrequency range (selected by the center and band controls),. Just keep the MIDI mode disabled and play around with the center and band controls and you will catch vocal or instrument snatches.

Please be aware that this simple way of using the plugin will only work with very plain recordings which have already a good separation of the different feature stems.

Once you have selected a frequency band you can optimize the output by tuning the „harmonic“ and „tolerance“ settings. To get better results enable also „drum detect“ to remove all drum like patterns, but this will introduce a delay to the output.

As shown in the picture above, in this mode you can also automate the „center“ setting of Isola Pro FX, to make an adaptive selection of the instrument or vocals you want to extract.

8. How to use the „MIDI mode“ To get better results and to be able to make more individual selections of the vocal or instrument to be separated, you can use the MIDI mode. With the MIDI mode you can create a MIDI track containing the notes of the vocals or instruments to be isolated from the original audio track.

You can pretty much automate this procedure by pre-selecting the audio stem you want to isolate by using the frequency mode (see chapter 7). The result created by the frequency mode is not perfect, but it is well suited for doing an audio mixdown to a new audio track and using this to generate MIDI events out of it, as possible with Cubase:

The picture above shows how to generate an audio mixdown of a pre-processed input, generated by the Isola Pro FX frequency mode.

Once exported, you can use the MIDI export function from Cubase:

Now you have generated a MIDI track. You must set the correct destination of it to the Isola Pro FX plugin, and you have to select the MIDI mode.

The extracted MIDI events won´t be perfect, so you will have to modify and optimize them, and remove unnecessary events.

Within the MIDI mode, you can optimize the output with the „harmonic“ and the „tolerance“ control. Please keep in mind that all these controls can be automated, of course.

Please regard that the corresponding MIDI notes in the MIDI mode will not be synchronized after turning on the drum detect feature. So when you use the MIDI mode you should leave the drum detect option activated from the beginning.

9. Contact and purchasing

We strongly recommend that you try the demo version before purchasing. If you are doubtful if Isola Pro FX will fit your needs, feel free to send us snippets of your song and we will send the extracted vocals or instruments back to you. So you can get a good impression about what is possible.

When the demo version´s timeout has expired or if you activate the MIDI mode within the demo version, you have the choice to be forwarded directly to the Lakeside Audio purchasing web site where the necessary licensing host MAC address will be filled out automatically.

For further questions please contact

webmaster@lakeside-audio.de

or visit

www.lakeside-audio.de

YouTube channel with demos and tutorials:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCN-LHG225Rb2KiOD0lxcHFA

Lakeside Audio

Markus HeiningerReiserbergweg 382327 Tutzing