How to Separate Vocals from a Song for Free (Mac & Windows)
A step-by-step guide to extracting vocals, drums, bass, and instrumentals from any song using free desktop software. No cloud uploads, no credit limits, no account required.
If you need to pull vocals out of a song — for a remix, a mashup, karaoke, or sample-based production — you have options. Most of them involve uploading your audio to a website, waiting, and hoping the quality holds up. Some cap you at a few free minutes, then ask for a subscription.
There is a better approach. This guide walks through how to separate vocals (and drums, bass, and other instruments) from any song using free software that runs entirely on your own computer.
What you need
One piece of software: Quota Stems. It runs on macOS and Windows, processes everything locally using Demucs (the same AI model used by professional tools), and is completely free with no limits.
No account. No uploads. No credit system. You download it, run it, and keep the stems.
Step 1: Download and install
Go to getquota.app/stems and download the installer for your platform. Installation takes about a minute. The app is around 1.5 GB because it includes the AI model locally — meaning it works offline after install.
Step 2: Load your song
You have three ways to get audio into Quota Stems:
- Drag and drop a file directly into the window
- Click "Load File" to browse your computer
- Paste a URL into the URL field and click Import — this works with YouTube links and even full playlists
If you load a folder, Quota Stems will batch-process every file inside it.
Step 3: Choose your separation mode
Quota Stems offers two modes:
- Standard 4-stem: Separates into Vocals, Drums, Bass, and Other (everything else). This is fast and clean.
- Advanced 6-stem: Adds Piano and Guitar as separate stems. Takes longer but gives you more control.
You can also toggle extra exports: Instrumental (everything minus vocals), Ableton Live project, and video stem exports (MP4).
Step 4: Click Start
Hit the Start button. Processing time depends on the length of the track and your hardware, but most songs finish in 1-5 minutes. Stems are saved to your chosen output folder, organized into named subfolders.
Step 5: Use your stems
Your separated stems are now WAV files ready to drop into any DAW — Ableton, Logic, FL Studio, Pro Tools, or anything else. If you selected Ableton Live export, you can open the generated .als file and the stems will already be laid out on tracks.
Why this approach beats online tools
- No upload wait — processing happens on your machine
- No quality loss — you are not recompressing audio through a web pipeline
- No limits — process 1 song or 100 songs, no credit system
- Works offline — once installed, no internet needed
- Your files stay private — nothing leaves your computer
What about video?
If your source is a video file (MP4, MOV, MKV, etc.), Quota Stems can export stems as MP4 files that keep the original video and replace the audio with just the selected stem. This is useful for isolating dialogue from video footage or creating instrumental versions of music videos.
Next steps
If you want to go beyond stem separation and start chopping dialogue or spoken words into playable sample kits, check out Quota Mini — it is the dialogue sampler in the Quota ecosystem, built for producers who work with speech, interviews, and film samples.