Hey, guys. I have a project I have to do, and I tried the phase cancellation technique with both the instrumental, and original. The phase cancellation works great, for a few seconds, and then the instruments fade back in. It probably would help if I used a lossless format, but I can’t find any other high quality version whatsoever. To best describe it, the tracks are identical in the beginning, but then it changes slightly. It confuses me!
One of the problems with lossy formats is that they do not maintain the phase of the original sound. If you can’t find a lossless version then there may be no way to solve the problem, though you could try Robert’s new “vocal reduction” (vocalrediso.ny) plug-in which is not dependent on phase. See: https://forum.audacityteam.org/t/remove-background-music/38226/8
Instructions for installing the plug-in: http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Download_Nyquist_Plugins#install
EDIT: Forget it.
We don’t need “decompressed.” We need “never compressed in the first place.”
Once you compress a sound file you burn the damage in. That’s why MP3 is called a destructive compressor. If you convert the work to a higher quality format, you will be able to hear the damage much better.
If all that’s wrong is the length of the two clips, you can change that with Effects > Change tools. Try speed. Measure the length of the two clips and see if you can figure out how different they are.
If the two clips were process on different machines, the digital sample rate may have been slightly different. The timer chip in a sound card cost eight cents. It’s not an atomic clock.
Never do production in MP3 or other compressed format. It closes more doors than it opens.
Koz
Hey, guys. I have a project I have to do, and I tried the phase cancellation technique with both the instrumental, and original.
What does that mean??? Where did the “original” and “instrumental” come from?
The phase cancellation works great, for a few seconds, and then the instruments fade back in.
What are you trying to do? You’re trying to cancel the instruments? If you are going to subtract-out the instruments you’ll need a perfect copy of the instruments-only to subtract from the mix.
Subtraction/cancellation works PERFECTLY if you have a PERFECT copy of whatever you’re trying to remove/cancel.
In other cases it doesn’t work at all… For example, if you record yourself saying “hello” twice, you’ll find that subtraction sounds exactly like addition (regular mixing is done by addition).
Still, if it started to work and then drifted off, that may be a simple song duration problem. Worth a shot at correction.
Koz