New Music Gear Monday: Waves StudioVerse Mix Unlock

Most musicians have faced a scenario at some point where you have a finished stereo master but you there are things you’d like to change, only to find that the multitrack session is long gone. Maybe the vocal needs to come up a touch, or the drums need more punch, but there’s no way back into the original parts. Waves has built a feature that addresses exactly that problem. It’s called Mix Unlock, and it lives inside StudioVerse, the company’s cloud connected preset platform.

For anyone unfamiliar, StudioVerse is Waves’ free plugin host that gives you access to thousands of mixing and instrument presets built by name producers and engineers, all searchable and loadable right inside your DAW.

Mix Unlock is a premium add-on feature within StudioVerse Audio Effects that brings real time stem separation into that same environment.

Real Time Stem Separation

Once Mix Unlock is loaded on a stereo track, it splits the audio into either two stems (vocals and instrumental) or four stems (vocals, drums, bass and instruments), and it does this while the track is playing, with no offline rendering or bouncing required.

Each separated element gets its own mini channel strip with input gain, fader, pan, mute and solo, along with a sensitivity control for dialing in how aggressively the algorithm pulls the parts apart.

Processing and Practical Uses

Once the stems are separated, the real fun starts.

Each one can be processed independently using Waves plugins or third party VST3 plugins from brands like FabFilter, Soundtoys and Valhalla DSP.

That means you can rebalance a finished mix, pull a clean instrumental for a remix or live set, or run an isolated drum stem through a completely different processing chain.

Mix Unlock also taps into the larger StudioVerse library, so thousands of preset chains are available to apply to any of the separated elements with a single click.

This opens up a lot of practical uses beyond simple repair work. Sample based producers can grab a loop from Splice or a similar library, strip out the drums or instrumental bed, and build something new around what is left.

Remixers can isolate a vocal from a track that never had stems available in the first place. Even mastering engineers can use it to make a targeted adjustment on a finished file without sending it back through the entire chain.

Mix Unlock is not a standalone plugin. It requires its own license and runs as a premium feature inside StudioVerse Audio Effects.

It carries a list price of $39, though Waves is currently running a sale at $19.99. It is also included with Waves Creative Access subscriptions, and for a limited time, Waves is offering it free to anyone who owns or buys any Waves V17 plugin.

As always with limited time offers, check current pricing before you buy.

You can find out more here, or watch the video below.

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