To go with his new album release Kanye West released a special gadget for musicians called the Stem Player. This allows you to break his album’s tracks down into separate stems, so that you’re able to isolate drums, vocals, bass or samples. Next to doing this with Kanye’s latest album, that ships with this device, you’re supposedly able to do this with any piece of music you throw at it, making it a cool little remix machine.
What can the Donda Stem Player do?
Built in cooperation with Kano, the Stem Player is a round puch-shaped device made of silicon. On top , you’ll find four touch-sensitive light bars, that allow you to control the volume on each of the individual stems of the songs you throw on the device.
The Stem Player supports a wide range of music formats, including MP3, MP4 WAV and AIFF. It has 8GB of internal storage, USB-C for charging a 3.5mm headphone jack and can stream audio over Bluetooth to your speakers. It also has a tiny speaker onboard.
Next to being able to fade stems in and out using the device’s sliders, you can also play around with effects (such as reverse and pitch) and loop points, so that you can repeat certain phrases and get that classic chipmunk soul sound from Kanye’s classic albums.
Check out the videos below to see the Stem Player in action.
Features
- CONTROL VOCALS, DRUMS, BASS, AND SAMPLES
- ISOLATE PARTS
- ADD EFFECTS
- 4 CHANNEL LOSSLESS AUDIO MIXING
- REAL TIME LOOP AND SPEED CONTROL
- TACTILE EFFECTS
- SAVE, PLAYBACK, AND SHARE MIXES
- CUSTOMIZE COLORS
- BLUETOOTH
- SOFT SKIN
- HAPTICS
- 4 TOUCH SENSITIVE LIGHT SLIDERS
- 97DB SPEAKER
- 3.5MM JACK
- USB-C POWER AND DATA
- ANTI-STATIC COATING
- 8GB STORAGE
- SUPPORTS:
.AIFF .AIF .FLAC .M4A .MP3 .WAV .WAVE .AAC .ALAC .MP4
Who is the Stem Player for?
When you’re a Kanye fan, this is a true collector’s item that will pair with his latest album Donda. Even if it doesn’t do well as music tech, it’s still a nice piece of merch.
Otherwise, this seems like a true music maker’s gadget. There are VSTs and online tools that allow you to extract a vocal from a song, or filter out a certain stem from a finished track. Yet, nothing seems so sophisticated to this purpose as Kanye’s Stem Player.
We’re hoping to see this pop out in the wild soon and will wait for some first-hand reviews of the device to see how well it performs on different music.
Where can I get the Stem Player?
The Stem Player is set for a ‘summer’ release date and can be pre-ordered for 200 bucks on Stemplayer.com
Be sure to check out all our favorite music gadgets in our round-up!
