Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have presented some remarkable audio from a new optical microphone system that uses cameras to see and reconstruct sonic vibrations. Remarkably, it can cleanly separate a single instrument playing in a group.

This kind of sonic isolation is extremely difficult even for high-end audio microphones, so to be able to achieve it using nothing but two cameras and a laser? It feels a bit like black magic. But the results, which you can see in the video embedded at the end of this piece, are stunning.

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Here’s the basic theory: sound is nothing but a series of pressure waves that travel through the air. Anything that makes sound is simply vibrating to create those pressure waves. An optical microphone is basically a camera system designed to monitor and interpret vibrations on the surface of a sound source – or even objects placed near a sound source, which vibrate in sympathy with the sound waves in the air around them.

Read more: New Atlas