Serato launched DJ Pro 3.0 in December last year with new stem separation tools and it was only a matter of time until the company's DAW would follow suit. It’s only about a month later and already stems have arrived with the latest update dropping today: Serato Studio 2.0.
The sampler section of Studio now includes small buttons above the waveform that allow you to target the vocals, melody, bass or drums from any track using Serato's own machine-learning algorithm. It does a great job isolating the respective stem segments quickly, at least once the system has a few seconds to analyze a track. You can then try out variations on-the-fly while a song is playing.
The company recommends an M1 MacBook or higher for the best performance when using stems on Serato DJ and that should certainly carry over here. Although Studio is less of a live-performance tool than the DJ app, it helps to have software that allows relatively seamless adjustments as you go — especially processor-intensive stuff like this.
Stem separation has been a trend over the last year or two and Algoriddim's djay Pro, one of the other leading apps in the market, has had a version of this in its own DJ app for a few years. The company even spun the tools off into a standalone app called Neural Mix Pro. That lets you extract stems for use in other apps, but isn’t a complete workstation for making beats on its own.
Serato has been growing Studio’s toolset into a more comprehensive DAW over time. It's a helpful tool for pros who want a way to sketch out track ideas quickly and it's an approachable introduction for those just getting started with beat making. The addition of stems makes this an especially useful complement to Serato DJ, rounding out the ecosystem to include a DAW and DJ app with deeper customization abilities than ever before.
Serato Studio 2.0 is available today on the company's website with options including a free limited account, a $10 per-month subscription or you can purchase a full app license for $249.