Karaoke Forums

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Greek,

If money is not an issue,  Try the Thompson Vocal Eliminator. $2000.00.
Its far better than the average vocal removing software
and they still don't guarantee Perfection on Every Track!

Vocal Removing software should be called, "Vocal Reducers"

They work perfectly on Songs with the following:
Vocal track Centered in the Middle.
NO Reverb or other Sound Enhancements!

If these conditions Are Not Met, removing the voice, removes sound quality in the instruments.
Leaving you with a "QUALITY WISE" Song that's HORRIBLE.

As you will soon see, finding a track under these conditions, is like finding
A Needle in a Haystack!

MTU's latest Vogone, gives you the ablility to accept a trade off, for these
undesirable conditions... Add a little voice, to enrich the music.

Personally, I'd rather purchase a professionally made backing track,
then settle for low voice and distorted audio.

Bottom Line... Vocal Removers Leaves Much To Be Desired!


Kind Regards,
sw00000p

The Thompson isn't worth the 2000 they charge, I have heard some of the basic software based programs do just as well.  SOme programs will do better than others as they have other dsp features like eq'ing & bass enhacements.
No program or piece of equipment is going to work on everything & unless the vocal wasn't recored dead center, nothing will completely remove them, yes as stated reduce, but even then you are left with a ghostly back track.  Then if you want to try anything from like the 50's-60's where it was mono recordings or their first attempts at stereo panning (vocals on one side with maybe 1 other instrument & the rest of the band on the other with the backing vocals), there would be no chance to get rid of the leads.  Also the problem that will come into play is it will also eliminate (reduce) instruments that were also panned straight up (center) in the recording such as the snare drum, the kick drum, the bass guitar, some guitar solos, sometimes keyboard, backup vocals sometimes.
Basically what a vocal eliminator does is search for like frequency patterns in both channels & phase reverses them so they are essentially cancelled out.  And along with the leaving something left to be desired statement, 70-75% of the time, you aren't going to find a track that will sound very good once finished.

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LIKE Lonman on Facebook - Lonman Productions Karaoke & my main site via my profile!

vogone iii isn't stuck on center panned vocals any more. In fact it is the only software that you can seek out where the vocals arer panned and reduce them. They too don't claim to be a vocal eliminator and use vocal reduction in htier advertisements on htier site.

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The Line Array Experiment is over. Nothing to see here. Move along.

Vogone is one of the better cheaper software out there.

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LIKE Lonman on Facebook - Lonman Productions Karaoke & my main site via my profile!

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many recording/mixing program can do that. The problem is not just where the voc sit in the mix, but the dsp effect applied to the voc. Those are impossible to get rid of.

So if money is not a problem; hire a cover band to record

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

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Greek,

On the MTU website, read carefully, you can purchase Vogone by itself.
You don't have to buy Microstudios.

sw00000p

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If you're using a Audigy2 audio card, it came with a software call EAX Console Advance HD?  This sofware has the best key changer on the market (my opinion) and it also has a voice reducer with an EQ, again, it's the best I've tested so far!

I'm using the Audigy2 ZS Notebook card on my new DELL Vostro, now, of course I needed to buy a Duel adapter (pc to express card) and man, is that ever a great audio card! I've tried so many key changer, I even offered my services for Beta testing for some companies and no one can get close to the EAX Console

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Um, the true answer is NONE.  If a program actually DOES remove ALL of the vocals, it undoubtedly degrades the quality of the music. The ONLY way it may be done is in a true ( not virtual) multitrack studio..  Any other way pretty much is a garbage producer. I would NEVER use one of these versions in a show..

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"No Contests, No Divas, Just A Good Time!"

" Disc based and loving it..."

Which is what was explained, but true I would would most likely never use a finished project in an actual show unless it did a very good job which again 75% or more of the songs out in original format aren't convertable into a useable karaoke format.

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LIKE Lonman on Facebook - Lonman Productions Karaoke & my main site via my profile!

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Karaoke Sound Tools give you the same quality of vocal remover as Vogone, but you also get tempo and pitch changer at the same price.

actually a high end digital audio workstation product like Pro Tools or maybe even Cubase has some ability to do this with minimal destruction of the background music but it isn't automatic by a long shot.  

The suggestion to hire a cover band really isn't out of line though.  I know one group of guys in the area who do a nice job of covering a lot of popular songs and they allowed some guy to attend one of their shows and take a set of line-outs from their board during a live performance.  This really worked pretty well, he ran the lineouts from all the channels and got basically the mix that was going to the mains into a standalone recording deck just like mine, (a Korg D1600), and he was able to change the settings a bit on his own end during post production mixdown.  If you have the inputs available to grab the vocals on separate tracks I think this could be a great way to get an evening full of live tracks that actually work.  Not perfection but probably pretty danged good!  My guess is that most local cover bands would jump at the chance to let you do this for an extra couple of C notes for a night of work they were going to do anyway and copy of the final CDs (With voals intact of course), that they could use as demos later.  You would have to video the performance to get the lyrics transcribed the way they did them that night as most live groups will sort of take some liberties with the songs, if foolks are dancing you might end up with some long, stretched out versions of some of the songs etc.  It' is doable though!

Sure makes the CDGs look cheap though since you couldn't sell the tracks without paying Harry Fox and the band a chunk of royalty money for each and every CDG...

BSR

I have just about the best equipment ,includeing tompson for doing this and softare is not any better.
You can do just as good of a job with free soft ware and a 32 band eq

Vogone is pretty good for a straightforward vocal removal....

As many have said - dont expect perfection. Either with 100% vocal removal or leaving the other insturments completely intact.

But if you want to do a better job it is probably best to only do the vocal removal on the portions of the songs that actually have vocals and leave the instrumentals unchanged for longer insturmental only breaks in the songs. This involves breaking the song into many segments and only removing the vocals from the segments that actually have vocals and then reassembly of the pieces. This often does much better than just setting up the frequency range and track location to remove the vocals from. Many songs have only minimal insturmentals simultaniously with the vocals so if you break the song up into small enough pieces, you will have much of the instrumentals actually the unchanged origional tracks, with degredation only on a smaller portion. This can be very time consuming.

Audacity does a lot of the steps for the above process but it is not "fast and easy".
Vogone can do a decent job sometimes in a matter of seconds but it treats the whole song the same.

In my experience it can be worth it if your singer really has a favorite song that has never been made as karaoke. I have only done a few songs but even the imperfect versions of a song that the crowd loves goes over well in a bar.  Every now and then it works well enough quality wise to be equal to commercial karaoke....