Hi all.
I’m a somewhat experienced Audacity user. I use Audacity 2.0 on Windows 7.
Is there a way to remove background music and leave just the voice that is on top of the music?
I was able to successfully remove the voice from the background music with the Vocal Remover filter on this soundbite recording, and that actually works pretty well… no sign of the voice after using that filter.
But I’d like to do just the opposite… remove the background music and leave the voice. I’m wondering, since I can get a track with just the music by using the Vocal Remover filter, is there a way to use that music track to then cancel out the music from the original track, then leaving just the voice?
Or, is there a specific filter that would help me do that?
Thanks,
digi
That’s Vocal Isolation, and you would assume you could just reverse the process. You can’t. Vocal Removal doesn’t just suck the voice out of the show, it also converts the show to mono. That’s what kills you. Very talented people have done the math and there’s no easy way.
There are some money-base products that claim to be able to do this using vocal recognizing techniques similar to Skype and video conferencing.
–Voice Trap
http://www.cloneensemble.com/vt_main.htm
–Extra Boy
http://www.kvraudio.com/get/1651.html
–Kn0ck0ut
http://www.freewebs.com/st3pan0va/
Koz
Thanks Koz,
Your third link to Kn0ck0ut at freewebs.com says it is a free VST plug-in. Since Audacity uses other VST plug-ins, will this one work in Audacity? The demos sound like it does a pretty good job… like this one…
http://st3pan0va.webs.com/kn0ck0ut_demo2.mp3
Also, your second link to Extra Boy says it is also a VST plug-in… for only 90 cents?!
Your first link to Voice Trap, also a VST plug-in, says it is $25.
Will all of these work in Audacity?
Thanks,
digi
They are reputed to work by people who have tried them. I have not.
Beware of test clips. We got very popular by people watching that YouTube video by someone who got Vocal Removal to work very well by hand (not using the Vocal Removal Tool – same thing). He happened to hit the one song where it worked very, very well. Most songs don’t and everybody else who tried it on other songs failed and they all showed up here wanting to know why.
They all said the same thing. “It worked on YouTube, why doesn’t it work for me?” If you used the same song he did, yours would work too.
Koz
Koz,
I downloaded KnOckOut and put it in my Audacity plug-ins folder, but I don’t see it in the Effects drop-down menu after opening Audacity . I was just searching to see if it showed up with a different name, but I don’t think its showing up.
The link to KnOckOut shows a little sample window with a pink header bar and a black interface with green text… not sure what program that’s supposed to show up in.
Anyway, thanks for the refs… it was just a little project I thought would be nice to have the voice-over without the background music.
Thanks again,
digi
I guess the sample image showing the little window with the pink title bar is for the LV2 version of the plug-in when used with several other programs, not Audacity. I just read that info.
But I downloaded the normal VST version of KnOckOut and it isn’t appearing in Audacity.
Anyway, thanks for all the references.
digi
It works to install the plugin, but does the plugin work?
Koz