Korean Job Discussion Forums

Man-e-faces

Removing vocals from mp3 files. I sit possible?
As the title says, I need to remove the vocals from a track. I can't find an acoustic version so I need to make one.
Any freeware or programmes round to do the job?
Cheers!

Thunndarr · Joined: 30 Sep 2003

blackjack · Joined: 04 Jan 2006 Location: anyang

I googled for you

http://www.jakeludington.com/ask_jake/20070513_remove_vocals_from_mp3_songs.html

no idea if it works

the_beaver · Joined: 15 Jan 2003

Possible but not easy, and the final product isn't always so good. Look for a midi version of the song, that will make life simpler.

SHANE02 · Joined: 04 Jun 2003

some of the apps work ok, but I agree with the above. Usually the dynamic range of the song is heavily changed. Go midi, or there are Korean sites where you can download very good karaoke versions of pop songs if that's what your after.

Underwaterbob · Joined: 08 Jan 2005 Location: In Cognito

There are a couple methods I know of, neither of which work very well.

Most of the time: In a stereo track, often the vocals are the only thing that is dead center, so many of these "lyric-remover" apps simply invert one channel and then add it to the other channel so that the vocals cancel themselves out. Problem is many other things overlap and they cancel themselves out as well, and vocals are not always dead center so you can often still hear them anyway. What's left is an annoying, swooshy, phased-out mess.

The other way is to try and cut them out with filters, which is pretty much impossible since the human voice has a lot of overtones (it actually consists of groups of things called formants) and overlaps many other instruments in range so cutting out the vocals cuts out a bunch of other stuff, but at least you don't get the annoying phasing effect.

It's even more difficult with MP3s since they are compressed and some of the information has been lost. If you can get a WAV ripped directly off a CD, either of the two methods mentioned above may be more effective.

In short, like I said before, it can't really be done effectively.

Man-e-faces · Posted: Mon Nov 03, 2008 4:02 pm Post subject:

Thanks for the ideas. Guess I'll set my co-teacher loose on the internet.

Bread · Joined: 09 Oct 2008

There are karaoke versions of everything on usenet. Whenever I'm looking for a song, I have to sift through the tons of karaoke versions to find a regular version.

blackjack · Joined: 04 Jan 2006 Location: anyang

the song may be among one of these torrents

http://www.demonoid.com/files/details/486268/?show_files=1&page=7&ref=1225845293#file_list

http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/3270202/WINAMP_KARAOKE#filelistContainer

itaewonguy · Joined: 25 Mar 2003

problem with karoeke versions is that they sound like CRAP!
bad electic piano tone ...

original backing tracks is what you want.. good luck finding those..
Ive been hunting for ages...