Karaoke Forums

ok i am thinking of purchasing a vocal remover, cause the ones you get with adobe cool edit and the likes are pretty crap.

ive been told that i would need to purchase something like a thompson vocal eliminator that they are the best on the market. Ive done a little research and this vocal eliminator is pretty expensive to say the least, is it the best and will it take all the vocals away...if its going to make the track sound like its been recorded in the toilet like the ones you get on recording software i am not gonna want to pay that kind of money out.

can anyone tell me about this product, does it completely remove vocals from tracks etc??? are there simular products that are better etc?

there is so much stuff i would love to record for fun and i simply cannot find the backing tracks normally cause they are so obscure hehehe

anyone help and give me some advice.

I found this:

http://www.hitsquad.com/smm/programs/Vo ... es/99.html

from this site:

http://www.hitsquad.com/smm/programs/Vo ... es/68.html

I did not read any of the other posts there.....but that may help.

Do a google search of the vocal remover. That usually brings up a lot of other forums and stuff where people give advice.

It also shows other stores and places that you can usually buy the product.

This is the website I found for it:

http://www.vocaleliminator.com/

It says that they do demos of songs for you....so I would find the most obscure song, one that you know won't be on karaoke, and I would even do some channel messing before I send it to them, to really give them a challenge, just to make sure they are giving you your money's worth.

I hope that my links help some others that know about this equipment, so they can investigate as well

Chow for Now Missy

Missy,

I also found some on ebay that are selling for around $100.00 to $500.00.

I would email some of the people selling it and ask them to give you some opinions on the product. It must work okay as there were no complaints about it on the ebay site...but these are used...but at least it is a regular person that you can check out....rather than a company that will do anything to sell....

Just to a search on "thompson vocal eliminator" when you get to ebay, and the options will come up There were 4 that I found when I did a search.

Chow

yeah ris ive already googled those sites and sent them an email with 1 song i know isn't out there cause ive been trying for 12 months to get it a lene marlin song...and they are using a thompson vocal eliminator.

ive also checked ebay and those on there are the older models the newest one i believe its the VE4 but i do first want some feedback...i was more wondering if anyone had actually worked with one here to tell me if i would be wasting my money.

i am still reading the for's and againsts many are saying vocals on the whole cannot be removed 100 percent there will be reverb left and it messes with the bass line, but i am not wanting these backing for professional use its just for recording on here and basically having fun and not sitting at my pc hours thinking mmmm i wonder if i can sing that ...i can just allllllll ma fav ones that have no backings hehehe.

thanks for doing the searching for me i appreciate it

Not a prob! I am glad to help!

I did not know excactly what you were looking for, so I provided the first bit of information I could find.

As for the older models, the newer will probably work, cause if the ones on ebay are old, and no one has complained about them, I am sure the new one would even be better.

There are a few songs that I would love to have as karoake...."Move On" by ABBA is probably the most I would like.....I can barely find the MP3 half the time...as it is a not well known song !

Good luck with your research....and I am sure someone here will help, as I don't really have a clue myself sometimes !

well if i do decide to get one...i will do those backings for ya ol...god i am now gonna cause world war 3 admitting i am a pirate queen ol

NOTHING is going to to work 100% - THAT I can guarantee!!! It is completely dependent on how the original recording was recorded.

The way they work is it searches for the same or "like" signals on each channel then it puts them out of phase from each other - thus eliminating them.
Now to understand it - and this may get a little technical, i'll try to keep it easy. Vocals are usually panned straight up (same on both channels), & this is the entire premise behind these products. However - there are several other things that are often so panned straight up ie bass guitar, kick drum, snare drum (often), sometimes the lead solo guitar, etc...so what happens when these units kick in - ***poof*** those instruments are now gone (or greatly diminished) as well. The Thompson has come a long way as it allows you to eq SOME of the instruments back in - but it still generally will have "ghost" tracks of the original singer as the effects are generally panned in different directions so these will remain. The tom drums will remain in near full force & most guitar tracks will stay intact, some keys & synthesizers should remain & most background singers should remain (often times).
MOST karaoke machines have some kind of vocal eliminator & while some may sound a little better than other they are all working with the same orignal premise. If you want to spend the cash for the Thompson for an occasion home use fun, you can but it isn't going to much better than any of the other cheaper systems out there or the built in to the player models. Put a parametric eq on those cheap systems & you pretty much got a Thompson.

BTW if you happen to want ANYTHING before the "stereo" revolution - ie mono recordings - to lose vocals, it won't happen as everything on both channels are the same.

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

I totally agree with what Lonman is saying, but would like to add a little. The recording studios have realised there are vocal removers, and now-a-days, they also make the vocals stereo, by copiing (s/p?) the mono track and off-setting each track between 15 and 45% left and right. That way no vocal eliminator will be able to remove the vocals. Vocal eliminators work well removing the old recording vocals, where as Lonny said th vocals are dead centre, but other wise, nope, sorry, doesn't work.

you say about a ghost effect, by putting fresh vocals on top and with the added reverb of those vocals would that cover up the ghost effect at all?

basically i tried today working with adobe and a wav file of something i wanted vocals removed from ...it was a donna summer song of the 70's that i cant find the backing for...not even these custom sites have it...so i thought ok i was getting the jist of what i was reading on a forum about vocal removers and how to do it using what software i had ... but even though i managed to get some of the bass back into it...i could still hear quite clearly donna in the toilet hehehe

if its just a slight muffled ghost effect and putting new vocals over the top will cover it...then yeah it could be worth my while buying one.

basically you have just confirmed though what ive been reading all along from people on these forums i searched....you can't all be wrong about it i am gonna carry on researching i think and see what this demo comes back like from the site ris posted in the link.

thanks for your input lonman

just found another that claims to remove vocals from any stereo recording.... alesis vocalzapper...pretty cheap as well retailing at about 100 dollars...but sadly can't find any reviews on it as yet.

That one is fairly new, just came out a couple months ago. But for 100 bucks vs what the Thompson cost, i'd opt for the 100 - if I were to spend the money at all.

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

Most music will have some kind of ghost behind it. Again it's all dependent on how it was originally recorded. I have heard some discs that sound like they were made for karaoke (few & far between), a good majority work fairly well & would be fine for a home use situation, but if you try playing it in the bar - & especially if your host doesn't know anything about sound, then the background will come through to some extent or another & the music amy sound like a bad Backstage disc.

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

If anyone's interested, I just downloaded a Karaoke program that excels in creating general protection faults and really is quite useless.
I found something called "Dart Karaoke studio" in a shareware site. A vocal remover that really stinks


MissyGG, I found a review regarding the Alesis device you mention, and the review pretty much seems to agree with what Lonman has stated. I will assume that it is OK for me to post the review that I found as a result of doing a search for reviews on this device. If it isn't permitted, One of the moderators can castigate me for it, and remove it I have no Idea who the reviewer is, but this still might be of help.



Review Of: Alesis Vocal Zapper
Date: 06/12/2004
Summary: Don;t waste your money



I have been trying to remove the vocal track from complex and simple audio. Both with the same result or should I say virtually no positive result.

Alesis claims that you can "remove the vocal from any stereo source" simply is NOT TRUE.

At best you can attempt to push the lead vocal into the background usually resulting in a hollow or tinny sound. The same sound I have achieved without the Vocal Zapper, by reversing the phase on stereo audio and recording it as mono.
It was once said that there is no free lunch. The Vocal Zapper once again proves that this is true.

NOTE I am a recording and sound engineer

(If the posting of this info is not allowable, I apologize)

yeah that also confirms just what lonman explained ..thanks for finding that review

i tried dart oh about 12 months ago as a vocal eliminator and yeahh it was crap and didn't remove them as much as the likes of cool edit and adobe.

done some more research again today..and decided against getting one there are too many negative reviews about them all the thompson included and for the money especially for the new model it would just be washing it away.

thanks all of you for your input and help

Hello!

This is my first time on this forum... I hope I can be of help.
I wanted to comment on a previous post revealing the fact that some music producers are purposely offsetting the lead vocal to discourage people from removing the lead vocal. I don't doubt that this is true, but there are ways to work around this. Some cd/tape units allow you to adjust the balance between channels. If the vocal is louder on one channel than the other adjusting the balance to equalize the overall vocal volume will make it possible to remove said vocal, with the added benefit of making the backup vocals and instruments LESS equal, thus not eliminating them. Years ago I bought a vocal eliminator from Radio Shack. I experimented with it extensively and was able to produce some truely remarkable vocalless tracks. It took some work to do it though. Part of the work was equalizing the vocals before they reached the Eliminator... the more equal, the better the results. This was accomplished through adjusting the actual balance control on my playback unit and listening for the best overall output, and by adjusting the azimuth (head-to-tape relationship) on the cassette player I used to play my source recordings. The other work involved using the right amount of reverb (provided by the eliminator unit) to mask any remaining lead vocals. I only paid about $25.00 for the vocal eliminator, but it was well worth it even thought it wasn't perfect. It used the old fashioned analog "out-of-phase" technology to do the elimination, but eliminators today use digital technology which is capable of much better results. I will someday buy a Thompson VE-4, but til then with a little extra work I can get acceptable results... at least most of the time.

What Lonman said about it depending upon how the track was recorded is so true. You will Never get rid of all of the vocal track. The best sucess I've had is when a vocal track is completely dry - No effects, and that is rare, rare, rare. If there are effects on a vocal track, the reverb, delay, or whatever effect was used will generally be left over, thus the Ghost effect.

_________________
"Many is a word that only leaves you guessing" - Robert Plant

_________________

I have three songs posted to Singers Showcase using the Thompsons Vocal Eliminator..You might want to click on them to listen to the quality..They are Sunflower, Hey Little One and You Raise me Up..Lonman is right...Some CDs sound excellent and some are not worth a darn..due to how they were produced...Thompsons will do free demos of your songs if you send them the music..FYI

I had done this as well at one point (about 10 years ago) & as the song did work - it was Evil Woman by ELO, there was a distinct part of the song that you could tell they had to switch back into normal mode for the instrumental parts between the verses. If they hadn't done that, the keyboard part would be completely gone. So some of it sounded washed out & some sounded like the original, I wasn't impressed.

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

On my Thompsons Vocal Eliminator (I have an old VE 3) there is an Auto Edit function which is voice activated..The Vocal Elimination is triggered by your voice and when not singing the background (singers and instrumentation) plays normal..This helps eliminate some of the problems that Lonman spoke of...of course if you use this function on the Eliminator your phrasing needs to copy the original or you hear the original vocal in some parts and your voice in others when the eliminator removes the original vocal. I use this Auto Edit quite often when I have problems of having backgrounds effected too much by the eliminator.