Remove Vocals from Audio Using Audacity

In the previous post I review a few of Audacity, here a few tips n ‘tricks how to make an audio file become an audio karaoke with removing vocal sound in the audio file. Keep in mind that was not all types of files we can manipulate the audio with maximum, so improvisation need to obtain the optimal results. Files have an audio format that various techniques with mixing different also, audio tracks in stereo have a hope we can further manipulation.

Case 1: vocal sound is in the middle, the sound of instruments scattered around vocal sound
If the vocal sound is located in the middle of a stereo track (usually “pop” genre), techniques “vocal removal” sometimes can work effectively. With this technique can eliminate one of the tracks (in this case the vocal sound), and ignore the other tracks (in this case the sound of instruments).
The use of this technique in Audacity is as follows:

1. With separate (split) stereo tracks to the left and right channel (click on the down arrow on the Track Panel, select “Split Stereo Track”).

2. Select a channel with the right to click on the area around the “Mute/Solo”.
3.Click the Effects menu, select “Invert”.

4. By using the Track Panel, change the channel the second track to “Mono”, and then play to listen to the results.

If you have been using Audacity version 1.3.5 above, you can use a direct function of the plugin Center Pan Remover (Vocal Remover) from Nyquist. However, if you still use the version below, you can add this plugin for ‘free’ to the Audacity with download it here.

That needs to be, the use of this technique will eliminate “all” the voice is in the middle track, so can not only vocal sound. In the type of pop music, this can remove parts of the bass voice and Rhythm too. The process of removal vocal sound is usually less perfect and will leave impressions, the impressions on the background track, especially if there are effects ‘echo’ in the audio source files, including backing vocals. This technique is less optimal when a file that will be edited in the audio file too many ‘echo’ (more if it is spread in the audio file), it is very difficult to separate one part with the other.

Case 2: The vocal sound in one channel, while the other voice (instrument) are the other channel
When we have a audio file (stereo) that ‘different’, in which the vocal sound and the sound of instruments in the channels that separate different, we can easily to separate ‘them’ to the left channel and right channel and then remove the channel that contains vocal sound one. Here the steps using Audacity:

1. Split stereo tracks to the left and right channel (click on the down arrow on the Track Panel, select “Split Stereo Track”).

2. Remove one of the channels (which one contains vocal sound); click the [X] on the Track Panel on the left. When you delete a wrong channel, use the “Undo” to restore.
3. Finally, click on the direction of the arrow and select the “Mono”.

4. Good luck.

video tutorial here.