Karaoke Forums

I have been looking for a certain karaoke song forever now and its almost impossible to find. Its christian music and I desperately want to sing it in my church.  Is there software that can take vocals out of this track to make it a karaoke song if I cant find it anywhere?

anyway its "you were there" by Avalon.

Min

THere is software that SAYS it can remove vocals.  I have it and have used it, and even in the best case scenario, it still leaves a faint vocal track on the recording.  You can buy this software on ebay for relatively little money.

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Spreading the karaoke gospel

There are a number of software and hardware devices that claim to remove vocals.  What nearly all of them do is invert one track and send out the sum of the two.  This causes anything that's panned dead center to drop out because the inverted signals cancel each other out.  The better ones use notch filters to cut only the vocals allowing the drums (which are usually panned center as well) to remain.

The problem is that when you try to cut out the vocals using this method it causes anomolies in the music.  If you sing over them you can drown them out most of the time but newer recordings don't leave the vocals panned center or use other techniques to prevent these tools from working.  You can try to use them but I'd search for the tracking first.  Chartbuster has put out a number of christian tracks.  If you post the song and artist information someone here might know where you can get the backing or if it's available outside the US.

Yep, ditto all the above......

If you have the original track including voice, then many player and some mixers offer a voice cancel option that cuts the vocals to a point, but also cut a slice of the music. Some work better than others and always, it depends on the actual track.

Vocal cut hardware/software is best used for practice and hope that the KJ at your favorite venue has the karaoke version in his books.

I searched KJ Pro and there are a few songs by Avalon but not the one you have listed. Good luck in your search.

http://www.ltsound.com/

Very expensive but works like a champ. Results are very professional sounding with no trace of vocals left and the music stays intact. But very expensive!!!

The Thompson works no differently than the basic models that come in karaoke machines.  They all use the same basic premise & even with the Thompson it CANNOT completely take out vocals that are panned off center (which many recording engineers are now doing) or anything from a mono track.  It does offer a little bit of eq'ing options (nothing more than a couple parametric eq channels basically).  It also will take out any instruments (just like the cheaper options) that are panned straight up - which are usually bass, kick drum, snare & often guitar solos & keyboards.

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#1: Have you actually used it J? and I mean used it, not listened to their demo's.
#2: You can hire a professional band cheaper then bying this software.
#3: mothercooter, as to your original question, the answer is NOT PERFECTLY. There are a lot of claims out there, but due to technical issues I don't want to discuss, it is not possible to get a perfect vocal removal.

Here is a tip from other forum about vocal remover

" Is it possible to remove vocals from an existing track?

Well, the short answer is...Yes...and No. The simple reason for these opposite responses is that the process of 'vocal cutting' or 'vocal zapping' (as some say in radio) is a process that's been around for ages, known in many record engineering circles as "A minus B listening". Here's how it's done.

The tip: If you're using a track from the 60s, 70s or even early 80s, you've probably got a decent shot of removing vocals. Paul McCartney's "Maybe I'm Amazed" (1970), Astrud Gilberto's "Light My Fire" (1969), even Donald F.a.gen's "I.G.Y". and "Walk Between Raindrops" (1982) are four good examples to try out. But it's all to do with structure....

To do this in Adobe Audition's Edit View, simply highlight your file and go to Effect> Amplitude > Channel Mixer and select the VOCAL CUT preset. You can preview and toggle between NO MIXING and VOCAL CUT to hear what's happening. You can also alter the phase relationship between the L&R channels by dragging the sliders.

So what's happening?

1 - You're taking a stereo file

2 - Then inverting the phase of one channel

3 - Then add the two channels together

That's it - that's all you've done. Now what's the result?

1 - Anything that was centre stage (hopefully, in this case, the vocal) will be cancelled out.

2 - This includes the bass, kick drum and anything else that was also centre stage.

3 - Material which is close, but not, centre stage will also reduce in level.

4 - The end file will be mono.

5 - On most modern recordings, FX returns are stereo or pseudo-stereo. Thus all the FX returns on the vocal will still be heard.

The truth of the matter is that you can, perhaps, on some recordings, reduce the vocal level. Whether or not you can reduce it enough is only discovered by trying it out. You will still have to contend with the problems of other instruments which also vanish, the generally reduced bass level and the FX returns.

Now, because your resultant wave can sometimes suffer from center-channel dropouts of things like bass guitar and bass drum, here's something else that you can do 'after' you've run the vocal cut (ala, center-channel cut) preset on a file...

(this tip is easiest to achieve in multitrack, but could also be done with Mix Paste)

After using the Vocal Cut preset on your file, save it (with a new name) and hit Ctrl-M to insert the file into Multitrack.

Open the original file (pre-vocal cut) and run a low-pass filter on it so that ONLY frequencies below 200Hz pass thru (effectively cutting everything above 200Hz). This will leave you with a stereo waveform that has possibly 'some' vocal element, but will primarily carry the bass and bass frequencies.

Now, insert the 'low-pass' file into MT, aligning it with the vocal-cut version. Play with the volumes to achieve a proper balance. This will allow you to restore a bit of the stereo image (if needed) as well as improve some of the low-end response (if it suffered to begin with)...

You could also try a stereo simulator. This usually consists of adding a small delay and mixing this with one of the two mono outputs. The same delay signal is inverted and mixed with the other mono channel (so if the two channels are ever combined, you once again get compatible mono).

A full explanation the limitations of vocal reduction techniques can be found at
http://www.ethanwiner.com/novocals.html - this is essential reading!

If you really want more information, you can use a search engine like google to find thousands more pages of relevant information, including many software products and services such as (at the time of writing, 1992?)

http://www.yogen.com/ ($15 s/w product)
http://www.mtu.com/ ($54.95 s/w product)
http://www.pgmusic.com/ - "Copyscat" ($49 s/w product)
http://www.tracertek.com/dart_karaoke.htm ($39 s/w product)
http://www.vocalreduction.com/ (service. $19.95 per song)
http://www.csp-audio.com/vocalremoval.htm (service. Typically $45 per song)
http://www.analogx.com/contents/dow...io/vremover.htm (free DX plugin)


As for removing the instruments and keeping the vocals, this cannot be done - if you try to isolate the centre of the stereo image, where the vocal is usually found, you will still have any other sound that was in the centre, plus half of what was left or right of the centre. You can try this using (for instance) the Audition 'Channel Mixer', first applying the 'LR to Mid Side' preset to your file, then using the 'Both=Left' preset on the result.

Finally, if you want to use Audition just for removing vocals, that's up to you of course; but there is so much more it can do, and maybe so much more you can do - why not also try using it to produce your own original and creative work?"
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Having said all that (are you awake in the back?) it should be noted that Audition 1.5 rewrote the above rules by introducing a Centre Channel Extractor effect which can extract just the vocal from a file, or take it out leaving only the backing, while preserving the stereo image. You could try the trial download to see how well it works on the material you have in mind.

Good luck

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I can neither confirm nor deny ever having or knowing anything about nothing.... mrscott

Never used it. They sent me a package that included a Demo CD and the pricing. Normally around 2500.00 but the "special" was 1800.00. They will allow you to send them a song of your choice and they will remove the vocals as a demonstration. They only remove about 30 seconds worth though. Way out of my price range. The demos I listened to sounded pretty good to me!!

The demos they send out are ones that work well.  Try sending them an old Beatles mono recording , they will say it can't be done.  I've seen this unit work in person & while it IS one of the better ones on the market, it still won't do any better (for the most part) than one built into a karaoke player with some eq'ing.

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this is the best I know of.

http://www.csp-audio.com/vocalremoval.htm

Very good examples

My Mackie DFX-12 has a built in vocal eliminator.  Pretty well just cancels out the center channel like most of the other software mentioned.  But it's rather nice to be able to just press a single button to automatically hear what it's like without the  middle channel than having to retune your entire mix and eq settings.  Also I have found a lot of recent recordings that work quite nicely with the onboard remover.  Other than the "echo" effects and a slight increase in bass frequencies it sounds similar to the original, just no vocals.