SplitScope: True center/side extraction for Audio Clips | Ableton | Page 1

pure kestrel Jun 4, 2026, 4:37 PM

#

Right-click any audio clip in Live to extract Center, Sides, Left, Right, or Mixed audio with a live spectrogram preview. SplitScope is written in Rust + TypeScript and processes rendered clip audio locally.

How to use

Right-click any audio clip.
Choose Open SplitScope....
Adjust Mode, Strength, Threshold, Width, and Brightness.
Hit Preview to loop the processed audio.
Click inside the Spectrogram view to seek the preview.
Click Apply to import the extracted result back into the Live project.

⬇️ Download: https://github.com/dancarasco/ableton-extensions/releases/download/SplitScope-0.1.1/SplitScope-0.1.1.ablx

I wanted a fast way to isolate center or side content directly inside Live.

Utility can be great for this - it does fixed M/S matrixing: Mid is essentially L+R, Side is essentially L-R, but SplitScope is an extraction tool: it analyses the audio by frequency, then lets you dial in how much center or side content to keep/remove, with preview + spectrogram before printing it back into Live.

#

Video demo

ancient dew Jun 4, 2026, 4:51 PM

#

is this different to what utility does in some way? i always thought sides were just L-R & mid was L+R? is the main thing here the visualizer?

pure kestrel Jun 4, 2026, 4:54 PM

#

ancient dew is this different to what utility does in some way? i always thought sides were ...

Good question - Utility does the basic M/S matrix/width stuff. It can do stereo matrix/width operations, but it can’t do "true" center extraction in the “separate shared center content from side content selectively” sense.

SplitScope is doing frequency-bin based extraction with strength + threshold controls, so it can isolate/suppress center or side content more selectively. The visualiser is mainly there so you can preview and look at it visually before applying it back into Live (bit of a gimmick)

ancient dew Jun 4, 2026, 4:58 PM

#

interesting, i'd be curious to hear the difference between splitscope's mid extraction vs utility doing this (and vice versa with the sides). u got any AB's?

pure kestrel Jun 4, 2026, 5:09 PM

#

ancient dew interesting, i'd be curious to hear the difference between splitscope's mid extr...

Sure. SplitScope lets you dial in the center extraction strength, so you can filter out the side guitars a little more, and for side extraction, SplitScope maintains correct stereo image (this example's quite obvious)

pure kestrel Jun 4, 2026, 5:29 PM

#

SplitScope: True center/side extraction for Audio Clips

ancient dew Jun 4, 2026, 5:38 PM

#

certainly sounds entirely different, i still don't fully understand why. it sounds spectral on the mid example

scenic kettle Jun 4, 2026, 10:51 PM

#

ancient dew certainly sounds entirely different, i still don't fully understand why. it soun...

Because it's a different technology: extracting left, right and center instead of calculating an L+R and L-R signal which is way more trivial.
Leapwings center one was the first tool that could do center extraction, there is also bertom audios phantom center which is a free plugin, and now apparently this ableton extension

surreal kayak Jun 5, 2026, 5:33 AM

#

adding on to that list I believe this is also done by MCenter

languid vortex Jun 13, 2026, 12:52 AM

#

I'm trying to understand how SplitScope's Side extraction works.
If I extract only the Side signal and then place Ableton Utility after it with Width set to 0% (mono), shouldn't the signal disappear completely?
My understanding is that a pure Side signal (L-R) should cancel out when summed to mono. However, with SplitScope I can still hear a significant amount of audio after collapsing to mono, even with the extraction.
Does this mean SplitScope is not generating a mathematically pure Side signal, but rather an estimate of the lateral content with some Mid information still present?

#SplitScope: True center/side extraction for Audio Clips