What is isolate?

Isolate is a free desktop app for Windows that takes a song and splits it into separate parts, such as vocals, drums, bass, piano, and everything else. Once split, those pieces open up in a mixer that looks and works like the multi-track software used in professional music studios, letting you adjust the volume of each part, mute or solo individual tracks, and play everything back in sync in real time. Beyond just splitting audio, the app also automatically figures out the musical key and the tempo in beats per minute of the song you loaded, using its own signal processing math rather than relying on an external service. You can bring in a song by dragging a file onto the app, browsing for one on your computer, or pasting a YouTube link, and once you are happy with your mix you can export it as a WAV or MP3 file. Everything runs entirely on your own computer with no internet connection required after the first setup, when it downloads the separation models it needs. No graphics card is required, since all the processing happens on the regular processor, though a modern multi core CPU with at least 4 GB of memory is recommended for smoother performance. The interface is available in both Portuguese and English, with a switch in the footer to change between them. Setting it up requires Python 3.10 specifically, since the underlying tools it depends on do not yet support newer Python versions, and ffmpeg needs to be available on the system for handling different audio formats. The project is released under the GPLv3 license and is described by its author as an educational tool meant for music practice and mixing study, with a note that separating copyrighted songs still requires permission from the rights holders and that downloading from YouTube may go against that platform's terms of service.