manipulating or removing vocals

[jaredonthefly]

Hi,
I'm new to audacity and delighted to find such an active online community.
I'm working on a project that requires removing vocals from an audio file. Utilizing the online resources I haven't been able to break out the vocals or manipulate them... Here is what I have tried so far:

1) Edit / Remove vocals
2) split audio into stereo, inverting left and going with Mono setting on R and L

In both workflows I'm losing most of the audio. I have tried with an MP3 and WAV file(s).

Is there another way to isolate the vocals for removal or manipulation?
Many thanks!
Jared

[steve]

In both workflows I'm losing most of the audio

That indicates that the track is almost identical in both channels, which in turn indicates that it will probably not be possible to remove the vocals with Audacity.

On last thing that you can try in Audacity is the new "Vocal Reduction and Isolation" effect: http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/voca ... ation.html
Note that it has an "Analyze" option that will give an indication of the chances of success.

Other than that, it's down to the expensive tools like Melodyne editor by Celemony (about $400 USD)

[jaredonthefly]

Many thanks for your reply!