Stems Rendering

To whom may help. It would be great if stems could play on the fly, to much music to render on my end. Never know what music I gonna play at any giving time. I have a large library.

Not possible on the current hardware.

3 Likes

Are you willing to pay 10k /player?

1 Like

How would it be ÂŁ10k? They just need a upgraded processor equivalent to M2 for example. Couple of hundred extra at a push.

Denon has not said its not possible it can be done they showed that it’s just the stems were not great. Real time stems has always been the objective for Denon ill take the instrumental and acapella on the current gear if thats all Denon can get it to do.

10K was a high bar just to show they won’t be cheap.

The current generation rk3288 chips (released 2014, over a decade ago at the time of this post) are ~$5-10 at scale, yet the SC6000M’s are $1,500 list price. how is that possible?

Current generation SoCs at that price point likely don’t have the horsepower to do realtime stems separation. That is if you can find an SoC with an NPU fast enough.

Easy: It costs millions of dollars for R&D and they have to recoup the costs and make a profit. Hell, the SC6000 used mostly the same SoC as the SC5000 and it cost a few hundred more at the time of launch. Why? R&D costs.

I’m not going dive into the technicalities of changing architectures and what not.

1 Like

I know the Prime 4 has a DSP chip, so I’m surprised that didn’t get used. Possibly because the code came from zplane?

I imagine future kit will be more capable. They must be working on it…

2 Likes

Did the prime 4 do stems real-time in the previous beta? I wasn’t paying attention then.

Yes but the quality was sub par hence the pre-rendered route they are currently taking.

2 Likes

It was the 4+ that had the standalone stem separation beta, but presumably the 4+ also has the DSP (as it’s a + not a - :smiley:). The sort of thing a DSP should be good at, I would’ve thought.

I notice Denon are giving politician’s answers in the FAQ:

Question - Can I render Stems directly on the PRIME 4+ (or other Engine DJ hardware devices)?

Answer - In our commitment to providing the best-in-class experience, the Engine team has integrated Stems rendering as part of the Engine DJ Desktop experience. This solution seamlessly integrates rendering stems into existing library management and preparation workflows available on Engine DJ Desktop. :face_with_spiral_eyes:

To my knowledge, the DSP was for the mixer FX and some routing. Not overly capable.

2 Likes

I’m remembering when I moved from an Atari ST to an Atari Falcon in 1992 it was the Falcon’s DSP that enabled Steinberg to offer 16 track direct to disk recording.

Over 30 years later, my assumption was that the Denon DSP would be a step up from that.

:thinking:

1 Like

Denon is ahead of the game on the standalone units and thats why I went with denon because I wanted to get away from the seperate computer. So to stay ahead they should’ve planned for it and beat everyone to the punch. DJ’s with large library’s, rendering is a problem, to have it on the fly would be more effective as I do not pre plan any of my shows.

Cost / benefit analysis back when the prime series were being developed gave them the data to do what they did to provide the devices to the market at reasonable price points.

Would you have paid $3-5K for media players without any insight to the roadmap and if stems were being introduced? Likely not.

It’s easy to say shoulda, woulda, coulda without being in their shoes at the time with their knowledge.

2 Likes

That’s definitely not the same as using a GPU or NPU’s parallel computation capabilities to run LLMs :rofl:

When most of these units were developed Stems wasn’t even a thing so can’t see how your comment helps at all.

2 Likes

I gave Denon a shot when they released the MCX8000. They learned a lot from that unit and continued to progress. They’re doing things that the competition hasn’t even attempted. I’m sure this progressive conversation isn’t happening over on the Pioneer DJ forums (they would love to). Keep up the great work Denon DJ!

I still use my MCX8000 for gigs most weeks. Bought it in June 2017 and still going strong. Quality piece of kit after the screen freezing issue was sorted under warranty.

How 90% of people on the internet view every single subject.

Race goes vrooooooom!!

1 Like

For those wondering, Stems for DJs were introduced in WMC 2015. DJ Stems - The new DJ format | LSA.

The SC5000 was released January 2017, so @Homeland101 is likely on point.