[adam79]

I've noticed products that remove the vocals from a song, leaving just
the bed. How is this actually done? Is it possible to perform this task,
w/ the same quality results in Pro Tools?

Thanks,
-Adam

[Scott Dorsey]

adam79 wrote:
I've noticed products that remove the vocals from a song, leaving just
the bed. How is this actually done? Is it possible to perform this task,
w/ the same quality results in Pro Tools?

This is discussed in the FAQ.

Basically, they take the difference between the two channels, so everything
common to both channels drops out. However, this includes the bass guitar
and kick drum on typical mixes, so they low-pass one channel so that you
get a sum below around 250 Hz and a difference above it.

It can work very well on a very dry mix that doesn't have any vocal panning
and no lead guitar in the center. On any other mix, it sometimes works and
sometimes not. Sometimes there's a lot of leakage but you can add an extra
guitar track in there and hide it.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[muzician21]

On Nov 30, 6:01*pm, adam79 wrote:
I've noticed products that remove the vocals from a song, leaving just
the bed. How is this actually done? Is it possible to perform this task,
w/ the same quality results in Pro Tools?


Keep in mind that it severely alters the character of the track.It
won't sound like "the same recording that (fill in performer) sang to
with me inserted into it instead."

It's kind of a kludgy trick that gives questionable results. You might
be better off to find a karaoke track that's very close to the
original and use that.

[muzician21]

The "Extraboy" plugin can work okay under certain conditions. The
examples they have on their page are under ideal conditions. Basically
the instruments panned pretty much hard L & R, the vocal pretty dry
and dead center.

Even still, the vocal isn't 100% removed and the instruments are
effected. Comparing the original to the "vocal removed" sample, notice
for example how the piano gets substantially muddied.

It will also do the reverse, isolating the vocal and other
elements....sort of.

[phillipvictorbova]

On Wednesday, 30 November 2011 18:01:02 UTC-5, Adam wrote:
I've noticed products that remove the vocals from a song, leaving just
the bed. How is this actually done? Is it possible to perform this task,
w/ the same quality results in Pro Tools?

Thanks,
-Adam

You might check out http://www.prosoniq.com/ They have an app called sonicWORX Isolate that looks pretty promising. Way back in the 90s Prosoniq sold a pretty cool editor/sound design app which ran on Mac OS9. Had a plugin called Pandora that did vocal suppression quite well.I still use it it from time to time on my legacy rig! After migrating their products to OSX, Prosoniq offered the earlier version for free on their site up til a few years ago. Probably still floating around the web somewhere.

phil

[William Sommerwerck]

There's another way to remove the vocals -- and without losing the stereo --
but I don't know if there's any software package to implement it.

Most two-channel surround decoders have "logic" circuitry that detects the
mono dialog and removes it from the left and right channels. (Of course, it
also removes anything else that's dead-center, or near dead-center.)
If there aren't any instruments "near" the vocalist, this might work well.

Most consumer surround controllers have a Dolby MP mode that can perform
this extraction with digital inputs. If you're willing to work in the analog
domain, a high-quality Dolby MP decoder (such as the Shure) might work.

[Marc Wielage[_2_]]

On Thu, 1 Dec 2011 11:08:12 -0800, William Sommerwerck wrote
(in article ):

There's another way to remove the vocals -- and without losing
the stereo -- but I don't know if there's any software package
to implement it.
------------------------------snip------------------------------

Yeah, tons of them. One recent one I've played with is Waves Center:

http://www.waves.com/Content.aspx?id=8885

available for RTAS, VST, and TDM.

Center allows you to adjust the level of phantom center vocals, and actually
does a pretty good job. I think it's not really designed for removing vocals
per se, but it will at least cut out the phantom center, which will
*sometimes* remove the lead vocal. But (as has been previously mentioned) it
also snips out any other instruments in the center channel as well, and any
reverb or backup vocals in the hard left and hard right channels will still
be there.

There are also Dolby Pro Logic surround decoders available as software
plug-ins, but they're not cheap.

--MFW

[William Sommerwerck]

"Marc Wielage" wrote in message
.com...
On Thu, 1 Dec 2011 11:08:12 -0800, William Sommerwerck wrote
(in article ):

There's another way to remove the vocals -- and without losing
the stereo -- but I don't know if there's any software package
to implement it.

Yeah, tons of them. One recent one I've played with is Waves Center:
http://www.waves.com/Content.aspx?id=8885 available for RTAS,
VST, and TDM.

Center allows you to adjust the level of phantom center vocals, and
actually
does a pretty good job. I think it's not really designed for removing
vocals
per se, but it will at least cut out the phantom center, which will
*sometimes* remove the lead vocal. But (as has been previously mentioned)
it also snips out any other instruments in the center channel as well, and
any
reverb or backup vocals in the hard left and hard right channels will
still
be there.
There are also Dolby Pro Logic surround decoders available as software
plug-ins, but they're not cheap.

And, as I said in the orginal post, there are analog and digital consumer
Pro Logic decoders. If I had nothing better to do with time, I'd pull out my
Shure HTS 5300 and see how well it removes the center-front component of a
stereo signal.

[Marc Wielage[_2_]]

On Sun, 4 Dec 2011 02:26:08 -0800, William Sommerwerck wrote
(in article ):

And, as I said in the orginal post, there are analog and digital consumer
Pro Logic decoders. If I had nothing better to do with time, I'd pull out my
Shure HTS 5300 and see how well it removes the center-front component of a
stereo signal.
------------------------------snip------------------------------

That's a very '80s method, Bill. You can do this in about 1/10th the time in
a digital audio workstation. Why take a digital file and go through an
unnecessary D/A - A/D pass if you can do all of it in the digital domain?

I had a Lexicon CP-3 digital Dolby Pro Logic decoder I used for years, and it
actually does have a coax digital S/PDIF input. That would do this entirely
in the digital domain. But trust me, extracting the center-channel vocal
using the method I outlined before, with a plug-in, is infinitely faster and
more effective.

I agree, 15 years ago, this was not the case.

--MFW

[Dominique]

adam79 écrivait news:ZJadneGEk-
tnet:

I've noticed products that remove the vocals from a song, leaving just
the bed. How is this actually done? Is it possible to perform this task,
w/ the same quality results in Pro Tools?

Thanks,
-Adam

If it's for karaoke, have you consider MIDI? There are a lot of well done
MIDIFILE of just about anything. You play them through good softsynths and
export audio or you play them through hardware synths and record the
output.

Personnally I like Yamaha implementation of General MIDI (XG) but in
hardware devices (not DLS). I have a Yamaha CP300 stage piano which has an
XG soundbank in it and it sounds quite good.