Lalal.ai Review – Creating Studio Acapellas Just Got Easier & Cheaper

Lalal.ai is a stem separation tool that you can use in your browser to separate vocals, drums, instrumentation, bass and more from tracks you’ve lost the stems to, or your favourite songs you want to remix/bootleg for Soundcloud or YouTube (not for profit of course) release.

The obvious place to look for free studio acapellas is always YouTube, but sometimes the quality is poor and the vocals or instrumental have a load of artefacts that come along with them. This is where stem separation tools come in handy.

You can use vocal remover tools like Lalal.ai to make your own DIY studio acapellas without sacrificing too much quality. And, you can also create acapellas for songs you can’t find on the internet – provided you have the track downloaded.

In this article, we’ll be showing you how to use Lalal.ai to extract stems with examples so you can hear if the quality is good. We’ll also be comparing it to some other options like iZotope RX8 and Acoustica to see if it’s worth your hard-earned music bucks

Is Lalal.ai Any Good? (TL;DR Verdict)

Price: free, $15-$30
Compatibility: browser-based, use on desktop device

If you’re looking for something to create studio acapellas or take instrumentation for sampling, this is a fantastic, low-priced tool. However, the cost can mount up over time.

So, if you’re going to be using a lot of stem extraction, we’d suggest paying for a full audio restoration suite like Acoustica.

Using Lalai.ai to Extract Stems

Lalal.ai is incredibly simple to extract vocals using, and the quality is surprisingly good when comparing it to the other browser-based options you have available.

To extract vocals using Lalal, you simply head to their website, scroll down and drag and drop the track you want to process. Then from the drop-down menu, you select: “vocals”, hit “create new previews” and the file will start processing.

Once the file has finished processing, you’ll be able to listen to your extracted file for up to a minute. And, you’ll be able to listen to both: the vocal recording by itself, and the rest of the track without the vocals

This is the exact same for any of the other stem extraction options and you can use Lalal to extract:

• Vocals
• Drums
• Bass
• Electric Guitar
• Acoustic Guitar
• Piano
• Synths

All of this is entirely free and you can use Lalal to create previews for as many tracks as you’d like for up to a minute. If you want longer than a minute, you can purchase their lowest tier, which includes: 90mins of track time for £15. (We’ll cover pricing in more detail below).

How Good Does The Stem Extraction Sound?

Vocals

On the whole, Lalal.ai does a great job of extracting vocals from tracks. Of course, you still get artefacts, but they’re minimal compared to some of the free vocal extraction tools (and even the paid) browser-based competitors.

Vocal extraction will sound better when using an audio restoration suite like iZotope, however, the $1000+ price tag on iZotope RX isn’t worth the jump for the quality of stems Lalal produces.

This is the original track we used in the processing:

Drums

Drums sounded nice and clean when separated and only had a few artefacts that would become almost unnoticeable in a mix when blended correctly.

However, the instrumental without the drums didn’t sound clear enough. It seems like Lalal was trying to get the crispiness of the drums extracted (which in all fairness is what you want), but removing that from the instrumental.

Original track we used (created by our own itsyaboylofti):

Bass

Lalal worked well isolating the bass on the example track we used. The bass is extremely funky and very well blended with the Kick to give it a glued feel. So, all things considered, we were quite surprised with the results.

Unfortunately, it didn’t manage to extract any of the beautiful electric bass runs and tones and was more focused on the electronic synth bass. The instrumental however is exceptionally clean from bass, only with a few sub FX exceptions still not being removed.

The original track we used:

Acoustic Guitar

We were really interested to put the guitar to the test, because in a lot of audio restoration/stem-extraction tools it’s not very good. Identifying an electric or acoustic guitar and removing it is so difficult due to the different tones of sound you can have.

Lalal didn’t perform well here. Maybe because the guitar we used was a sample instrument, or the beat used is busy, but it barely managed to pick up the guitar – leaving most of it in the instrumental extraction of the version.

Hopefully, this feature gets improved with updates, but for now it’s not great.

Here is the beat we used to extract guitar from:

Piano & Electric Guitar

After hearing the acoustic guitar, we wanted to give Lalal the benefit of the doubt and chalk it up to a difference in the definition of what an acoustic, electric guitar or piano might sound like. So we ran it through both the piano and electric guitar algorithms.

Unfortunately, Lalal didn’t work well on either of these missing the extraction entirely or making it sound muffled. This was a shame because the drums, vocals and instrumental extraction had been so good.

Hopefully, they fix this with more updates and as more data is fed to the AI.

How Much Does Lalal.ai Cost?

This is fairly expensive for vocal extracting and, when comparing it to competitors like Splitter.ai (which is completely free), it’s a bit difficult to recommend purchasing Lalal.ai based on price alone.

However, removing price from the equation, Lalal allows for larger file uploads and better file quality (for downloads), which is something that the free and paid online alternatives do not offer *yet*. Although this might seem like a small feature to have over the competition – it makes much more of an impact than you might think.

For instance, with Splitter.ai, you can only upload 0.5mb files and have a 20-minute length limit. Unfortunately, cramming 20 minutes into a 0.5mb is next to impossible, and will completely compress and destroy the audio quality of your stems. And, if you’re a music producer, this really should matter to you.

How Does Lalal Compare To Other Stem Extractors? (iZotope, Spleeter etc.)

Lalal offers the enticing, easy-mode, click a few buttons and you’re done interface, but how does it compare with audio restoration suites and, would you be better off just purchasing a full version of RX8 or Acoustica?

Other Browser-Based Tools

When comparing it with Splitter.ai – you’re definitely getting a better sound quality and a more headache-free experience. By paying for Lalal over Splitter.ai, you get much higher quality files, a better algorithm for extracting stems, fast, batch processing and much higher upload limits.

However, in contrast, if you pay for Splitter.ai’s Pro version – you’ll get access to more advanced tools like “Unverb” and “2 Stem Pro”. Unverb is great for removing reverb from stems and, 2 stem pro is awesome at creating vocal acapellas.

When comparing it to Spleeter, the sound quality isn’t much better, but if you’re not technically gifted (or don’t own Ableton) – Spleeter is a mindfuck to set up and you’ll need Max4Live. Granted, it’s only $1, so you’re saving a lot, but sometimes the time invested just isn’t worth it. It also crashes a lot.

Full Audio Restoration Suites

When comparing Lalal.ai on solely stem extraction abilities, it pales in comparison to Acon Digital’s Acoustica or iZotope RX8. And, that’s not even mentioning the extras you get with the restoration suites. Of course, you’ll pay a massive premium for RX8 (over $1000). However, something like Acoustica is much more affordable, costing $169 for the full software.

If you’re into stem extraction and audio restoration it would be advisable to get Acoustica or RX8. They’re much more powerful and professional tools to use for this. Also, if you start to use vocal extraction a lot, the pay as you go plan on Lalal.ai can mount up over time.

However, it all really comes down to what you think is necessary for your music collection. If you just want simple extraction, Lalal.ai is a stellar pick and won’t let you down.

But, if you think you’re going to be using vocal extraction a lot and want other tools like Denoisers, Declickers, Deverb & other audio restoration tools – pay a little more and get Acoustica or RX8.

What About Copyright & Using Stems?

Obviously we understand that as a producer, you’re probably making illicit remixes anyway. Producers upload to platforms like Soundcloud and YouTube all the time.

As long as you are not making money off this content, then you are fine. The worst that could happen is the platform you upload to could take your remix down for copyright and potentially ban your account from using their services.

Often, services like Soundcloud or YouTube have automatic copyright detection tools, which will instantly delete your music. There are ways around this, but it isn’t advised to use these techniques. However, sometimes you have a banger remix and want to share it with the world. We would personally upload it, but don’t expect it to stay there forever and don’t get upset if it gets removed!

Remember none of this is legal advice. We’re just men on the internet sharing our experience.

Is Lalal.ai Free?