Hey guys, so I’m sure this issue has been brought up a lot and I apologize if there’s a recent thread about it. Basically I’ve done the usual tricks to remove the audio and it’s still kinda warped and audible. The tracks I’m working with are from a musical (Little Shop of Horrors) and so obviously the vocals are much more prominent than many normal songs, so are there any well known work arounds to this? Thanks in advance.
Probably not. Note that Vocal Removal has a parenthetical alternate name (Center Pan Removal). That’s what the tool was actually called through several version of Audacity and that’s what it actually does. The elves spent a lot of time explaining what the cross was, so the tool was officially changed.
However. That’s still all it does. Anything smack dab in the left-right center of a stereo show departs and everything else stays around.
If the voices have surround, special effects, or location effects applied, it’s not a good candidate for vocal removal. The original voice may vanish, but the stereo effects or other production tricks will stay.
Here’s a clip with vocal stereo special effects and what happens (before and after).
http://kozco.com/tech/audacity/clips/MysteryTrain3.mp3
So if that’s similar to what you have, then that may be as good as it gets.
Koz
The worst thing that happened was that one guy on YouTube that got one song to perfectly cancel using similar tools. Everybody on earth assumed, wrongly, that all songs work like that. They don’t. He picked a celebrity song and most songs don’t work that well.
That business of splitting and inverting one side of the stereo show? That’s what Vocal Removal does automatically. You can go through the manual steps yourself, but it’s the same process.
Koz