Background music isolating from extracted vocals?

[Tri]

Is there any way of isolating the background music to the minimum so I can leave just vocal part intact? When I invert original instrumental track with a vocal + instrumental one there's still a little bit of background music left in most cases when I do this.Mostly high freq. sounds are left.

[kozikowski]

If you got close that way, then you may be able to use the Time Shift Tool to push one track slightly later or earlier to complete the cancellation.

High frequencies are rough to do, particularly if you're using MP3 files which can have timing problems.

http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/time_shifting.html

Koz

[Tri]

Yes,I had used mp3 files and I have used time shift tool.The thing is the instrumental version is a little bit faster then the other track.I used change speed so I could match somehow the two tracks and noticed also that I had problems before with the other songs I wanted to extract vocals.The instrumental version was in most cases a little bit slower or faster like in this case.Is there some filter that can matches both vocal-instrumental and instrumental track perfectly?

[kozikowski]

Not one button-push easy, no.

You're much further along than most posters who assume the two tracks are molecular-level accurate and they just need to subtract them.

Now you're probably suffering from MP3. Every MP3 is slightly different because its job is to hide portions of audio depending on content. Different content, different hiding and different sound damage. So that trumpet may seem like it's the same between the two tracks, but it's not —at least not in the MP3. Now if you had the WAV files, then yes, just subtract them and go home.

Koz

[Tri]

Didn't know mp3 had similar yet different amplitudes between two tracks that's too bad. Thanks anyway!

[kozikowski]

It's actually worse than that. Audacity doesn't directly edit MP3. It converts to an internal format and then edits that. It has to make a new MP3 when it's done and the MP3 compression sound damage goes up. Sometimes doubles.

Number 3.

The Four Horsemen of Audio Recording (reliable, time-tested ways to kill your show)
-- 1. Echoes and room reverberation (Don't record the show in your mum's kitchen.)
-- 2. Overload and Clipping (Sound that's recorded too loud is permanently trashed.)
-- 3. Compression Damage (Never do production in MP3.)
-- 4. Background Sound (Don't leave the TV on in the next room.)

Koz