www.lakeside-audio.

de

Isola Pro FX
User Manual
V2.0
Contents
1. License Agreement ...........................................................................................................3
2. Product Liability .................................................................................................................4
2.1 Third party copyright notice .............................................................................................4
3. Overview ...........................................................................................................................5
4. System requirements ........................................................................................................6
5. Installation instructions and licensing................................................................................6
6. Controls description...........................................................................................................7
6.1 Drum Extraction...........................................................................................................7
6.2 Harmonic Extraction....................................................................................................8
6.3 Output routing............................................................................................................11
7. How to use the „automatic mode“ ...................................................................................12
8. How to use the „MIDI mode“ ...........................................................................................14
9. Contact and purchasing...................................................................................................16
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 the
licensee 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 or
to 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 for
the 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 of
defects.
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 subtraction
or phase/invert filter methods, the underlying algorithm works in real time by using
psychoacoustic analysis.

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. Therefore you have to
use PCM quality input sources, mp3 files are not suited because most of the
features which are important for extraction have already been masked out.

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.

The current version of Isola Pro FX 2.0 splits its input into 3 sections which are working
independently – drum extraction, harmonic extraction and the inverse harmonic extraction.
You can mix the results together or retrieve them on different output channels.

For the harmonic extraction path two operation modes are available.

There is a simple „automatic 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.
Isola Pro FX 2.0 comes with four different automatic algorithms which are described in
detail in chapter 6.2 Harmonic Extraction.

To get better results with more complex mixes, you need to work a little bit harder and
have to use the MIDI mode. 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
midi track 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 also have a look at the tutorial video:

https://youtu.be/cDajVEonhOU

Restriction of the demo version:

The demo version silences the output after using it for about 30 minutes.
4. System requirements

At the moment Isola Pro FX 2.0 supports Microsoft Windows 7 and greater as well as
MacOS 10.10 and greater with the following variants:

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

• VST2.4 64 bit plugin for macOS

It has been developed and tested with Steinberg Cubase 8.5 and Audacity (32 bit dll
version). Is has been tested with Reaper on macOS 10.13 High Sierra 64 bit, but it should
also work with older versions beginning from 10.10.

5. Installation instructions and licensing

Isola Pro FX 2.0 is delivered as a ZIP-file containing the following items:

• VST2.4 plugin „isolaprofx32.dll“ in folder „plugin/Windows“:

This is for 32 bit applications like Audacity, please copy it into the appropriate
plugin folder (should also work with many other DAWs like Ableton)

• VST2.4 plugin „isolaprofx64.dll“ in folder „plugin/Windows“:

This is for 64 bit applications.

• MacOS VST plugin package „isolaprofx.vst“ in folder „plugin/macOS“

The package isolaprofx.vst must be placed to Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST/.

• This document

Attention: Isola Pro FX 2.0 is protected with a node locked license and it can only be
used on the host where you have unlocked the demo version. Please contact us if
you need further activation keys for other hosts.

If you experience any problems or want to migrate to a new host, please get in
touch with webmaster@lakeside-audio.de.
6. Controls description
In this chapter all the controls are specified. Of course all controls can be automated.

6.1 Drum Extraction

Isola Pro FX 2.0 has an own and independent processing path for drum extraction. You
can use it to extract drums out of audio recordings and mix them back to the original to
improve the punch for example.

You can enable the drum extraction path by clicking on the on/off button at the right side of
the „drum extraction“ label.

The drum extraction process can be controlled by the following parameters:

stereo

Turn on this switch to enable stereo drum processing.

Attention - this will take double processing power.

accuracy

Increase this setting to let the algorithm run more iterations and to improve the separation
between percussive and harmonic material. Please keep in mind that this also will take a
vast amount of processing power. Reduce this setting if you already get performance drop
outs.

mix level

With this setting you can control the level of the extracted drums mixed to the output sum.

gate

Isola Pro FX 2.0 comes with a dynamic gate as well as for the drum detection and the
harmonic detection. You can improve the results of the drum detection to skip artifacts
between extracted bass drums and snare drums by engaging the dynamic gate. Turn on
the switch at the right side of the „gate“ label to activate the gate.

attack

This setting controls the time needed by the gate to open.

release

This setting controls the time needed by the gate to close after the input level falling under
the threshold.

threshold

This setting controls the threshold below which the gate will silence the output.

6.2 Harmonic Extraction

The harmonic extraction path can be enabled by turning on the switch at the right side of
the „harmonic extraction“ label.

Important! If you leave it deactivated, the audio input will be routed over the pre-
processing stage of the harmonic extraction selecting mono (left plus right, left
minus right or right minus left) or stereo input only , as controlled by the „input“
setting (see below). You can use this to do a very simple extraction by subtracting
the channels for example or route the stereo input signal 1:1 to the output to mix it
together with the results of the drum detection, for example. The output level is
controlled by the „output mix level“.

The harmonic extraction path can controlled by the following parameters:

input

With this setting you can control how the audio stereo input will be routed to the extraction
process or straight to the output, if you leave „harmonic extraction“ to off. „L+R“ builds the
sum of left and right channel, weighted by the „balance“ knob, „L-R“ subtracts the right
channel from the left one (scaled by „balance“), „R-L“ subtracts the left channel from the
right one (scaled by „balance“), and „STEREO“ will enable stereo processing of the
harmonic extraction path (needing more processing power).

balance

See „input“, this will control how left and right channels are combined together in the mono
modes.

leveller

This is one of the most important features of Isola Pro FX. By enabling the leveller the
input will be prefiltered and all percussive material will be damped.

Important! This feature will introduce an additional processing delay of about half a
second.
You can control the accuracy of the leveller with the knob above the activation switch, but
you should leave it at the left side in most cases because increasing it will consume vastly
more processing power.

MIDI mode

Turning to position „on“ will enable the MIDI mode, in position „off“ the automatic mode is
enabled. See also chapter 7. How to use the „automatic mode“ and 8. How to use the
„MIDI mode“ .

gate

Isola Pro FX 2.0 comes with a dynamic gate for the harmonic detection. You can improve
the results of the harmonic detection to skip artifacts between extracted vocals or
instruments by engaging the dynamic gate. Turn on the switch at the right side of the
„gate“ label to activate the gate.

attack

This setting controls the time needed by the gate to open.

release

This setting controls the time needed by the gate to close after the input level falling under
the threshold.

threshold

This setting controls the threshold below which the gate will silence the output.

tracking

This control is very important for the harmonic extraction. As an improvement compared to
older Isola Pro FX versions Isola Pro FX 2.0 has a new tracking mechanism which will
detect harmonic material (like vocals or harmonic instruments, contrary to drums and
percussion) in the audio input.

The tracking parameter controls the minimum length of the harmonic feature (also called
„harmonic track“) to be extracted. If you increase it, it could happen that parts of the vocals
or instruments will be dropped if the underlying harmonic track is not long enough.

It depends on the input material – with an audio source which has already a good
separation between drums, instruments and vocals you can set the tracking parameter to
the right and it will deliver best results. With more complex material more and more
elements will be dropped by increasing this value – you have to find the correct point.

Please bare in mind that you can also automate this parameter out of your DAW.

harmonic

This setting controls how the overtones of a detected fundamental harmonic track are
extracted. By decreasing this value, the frequency bands around the multiples of the base
frequency where the overtones will be selected will be narrowed.

attenuator

By enabling this setting the harmonic overtones described as above will not be simply
skipped if they are beyond the selected range (controlled by the „harmonic“ parameter),
but they will be attenuated only. The amount of the attenuation is controlled by the
„harmonic“ setting. The farther away a detected overtone track is from the expected
frequency of the harmonic overtone, the more it will be damped.

transient

The harmonic extraction only extracts harmonic features out of the input. If you want to mix
back a certain amount of transients (like sibilants), you can increase this parameter.

overtone

This parameter is very similar to the tracking parameter, but it controls the minimum
harmonic track length of the overtones to be extracted for a detected fundamental
harmonic track. In most cases you can leave this at about 10%, you can increase it to filter
out remaining percussive elements like snare drums or hihats.

output mix level

This parameter controls the level of the harmonic extraction result mixed to the output
sum.

inverse mix level

This parameter controls the level of the inverse harmonic extraction result mixed to the
output sum. So if you have extracted the vocals for example, you can decrease the „output
mix level“ and increase this parameter to get the remaining instruments.

Please note: This feature is thought to give you the option the remix a song directly,
so to increase/decrease the volume of the vocals for example. With most audio
input material it is not suited well for creating instrumental tracks.

center

This is an important parameter for the automatic mode. This control is used to select the
center frequency of the frequency band where the algorithm trys to detect vocals or
instruments. In the spectrum window you can see a corresponding grey-colored area of
this detection frequency band.

Hint: Instead of using the center setting, you can also modify the frequency band by
moving the upper and lower edges of the greyish area within the spectrum window
with the mouse cursor.

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.

Hint: Instead of using the center setting, you can also modify the frequency band by
moving the upper and lower edges of the greyish area within the spectrum window
with the mouse cursor.

algo

This is new in Isola Pro FX 2.0 - With this setting you can choose the automatic algorithm
which is applied to extract harmonic features in the harmonic extraction mode. „

• „Magn“ will simple select the fundamental harmonic track with the greatest level.

• „Freq“ will select the fundamental harmonic track with the lowest frequency

• „Voice“ is an optimized algorithm for detecting vocals

• „Instr“ is optimized for instruments

6.3 Output routing

Isola Pro FX 2.0 is a 2 channel to 8 channel plugin, so it has 4 stereo outputs.

• The first stereo output contains the audio sum controlled by the „drum mix level“,
„output mix level“ and „inverse mix level“ settings.

• The second stereo output channel contains the extracted drums (if drum extraction
has been enabled).

• The third stereo output channel contains the harmonic extraction result.

• The fourth stereo output channel contains the inverse harmonic extraction result.

You can use this feature to add further effects of the extracted features within your DAW
and mix it together again. So you can use Isola Pro FX to extract the vocals for example,
do a pitch correction of the vocals, some dynamic compression and other improvements,
and mix it back together with the instrumentals.
7. How to use the „automatic mode“

In the automatic mode Isola Pro FX will try to isolate harmonic material within the choosen
frequency range. It is displayed as a grey-colored area within the spectrum window and
can be selected by the center and band width controls or the mouse cursor within the
spectrum window itself.

Just keep the MIDI mode disabled and play around with these settings 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 additionally
tuning the „tracking“, „harmonic“ and „overtone“ settings. To get better results enable also
the leveller to remove all drum like patterns, but this will introduce a delay to the output.

Normally best results can be obtained by leaving the tracking setting at least at 50%,
harmonic at 100%, overtone at 10%.

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.

To remove the remains of the surrounding stuff, also use the dynamic gate in the harmonic
extraction settings which to hide all sounds below a certain level.
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 automatic mode (see chapter 7). The result created by the automatic
mode may not be 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 automatic 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 „tracking“, the „harmonic“ and
the „overtone“ control. Please keep in mind that all these controls can be automated, of
course.

Important: Please regard that the corresponding MIDI notes in the MIDI mode will
not be synchronized after turning on the leveller feature. So when you use the MIDI
mode you should leave the leveller option activated from the beginning.
9. Contact and purchasing

We strongly recommend that you try the demo version before you buy Isola Pro FX!

If you like the plugin you can order a 5-digit activation code at the webshop, where you
have downloaded the demo version.

To activate your Isola Pro FX license, you have to click on the shopping cart icon within
Isola Pro FX. You will be directed to our product activation website, where you have to
enter your activation code. Afterwards you will get a license file which you have to load into
Isola Pro FX by clicking on the unlock button.

Please contact us if you have further questions:

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 Heininger
Reiserbergweg 3
82327 Tutzing