Help Remove Vocals - Almost There...

[willieb]

Hello,

First off I'm brand new to audio stuff, including audacity, however I am a very technical person as a network admin over an ISP. JFYI. Anywho...

I am trying to remove vocals from a song for our church, staying with free software. I've read the tutorials, searched the forums, tried various methods, including the split, invert, mono method. That made is sound really weird on the beat. I'm closer with the center pan remover since I can select only the part with the vocals I want removed, but no cookie yet. It will remove the main vocals great, but it also removes some of the drums, base drums, or whatever so apparently that's also in the center. I used the "center pan remover" plugin, then amplified it. It doesn't seem to make much difference on the frequency I put it on for low and high. I even tried kn0ck0ut and Extraboy, with no luck. Problem is there I have no idea about the settings and have trouble finding howto's anywhere. Besides, I think it's specific to each situation so you'd only know if you've already done it, as in what to do. Which is why I am posting, to the experts. If I could isolate the cut parts and put it in a separate track, I might could cut out the words and leave the drums somehow, not sure. hmmm...

So here's the original, and here's the output. The changed audio is between 34s and 103s.
^Right-Click => Save Target As...^

The background vocals you still hear is fine. I was just trying to remove the main vocals in 3 different sections of the song. If you figure it out, please share...

Thanks in advance for any replies!

[willieb]

Surely someone here can help? Is there nothing else I can do to get better results?

[kozikowski]

The main vocals aren't entirely in the middle, at least not on my speakers. They have special effects added to their production to enhance the performance by appearing wider and fuller. Once the company does that, you're dead.

<<<it also removes some of the drums, base drums,>>>

Yes, anything surgically in the middle goes away, typically drums and sometimes string bass.

That's why the tool is called "Center Pan Remover." It can sometimes be used to remove vocals if the vocals were recorded so that they cooperate. Not all are.

Sorry to rain on your parade, but the vocals in that piece were deliberately produced to blend nicely with the orchestration and there's no way you're going to separate them with frequency analysis or any of those tools if straight center cancellation doesn't work.

You might find better tools in Audacity 1.3. You can install both on your computer as long as you don't run both at once.

There was also one posting that said they found "Center Removal" tools where the singer didn't have to be in the middle. You can search the forum and I'll see if I can find that, but I'm not on the edge of my seat.

Koz

[kozikowski]

That was too easy. I gotta speak to the forum administrators.

http://audacityteam.org/forum/viewtopic ... pan#p14889

Koz