Delete backround music/sound

[Dingeling]

I have a DV video recording in which a radio is playing music in the background, and people are talking in the foreground. I would like to remove the background music, but retain the peoples voices.

How do I go about doing this?

[steve]

You have three performers in your show. Two are talking loudly and the other is singing quietly in the background.
Although we can hear that some of the sound comes from the two louder (human) performers ans some comes from the quieter (radio) performer, as far as Audacity is concerned it is all sound and it is unlikely that they can be separated.

[Dingeling]

I've seen some dectective shows on TV where they seem to be able to isolate a sound in the background of a sound recording. (e.g. the sound of a train station AP annoucement in the background of a telephone call).

Is this just science fiction then, or is it just bejond the capability of Audacity? If it's the latter, then does anyone know of any software that could do it?

[steve]

I've seen some dectective shows on TV where they seem to be able to isolate a sound in the background of a sound recording. (e.g. the sound of a train station AP annoucement in the background of a telephone call).

It's mostly fiction, though there are some special case scenarios where separation is possible.
One example, if the sounds are in different frequency bands then they can be separated by filtering (if you have a recording of, say, bird song, and there is a low traffic rumble in the background you can separate the high pitched bird song from the low pitch rumble).
Another example, if it is a stereo recording and one sound is dead centre of the stereo mix and other sounds are off-centre then the sound that is dead centre can be removed.
The scenario that you have described does not fit with any "special case" scenario that I know of.
There is a tool by Elevayta called "Extra Boy" that is designed to deal with these special cases (not free, but there is a free demo version available if you want to try http://www.elevayta.net/product13.htm )