Have you ever listened to a song and wished that you could remove the vocals? The art of eliminating the human voice from music tracks is notoriously difficult to do - but it can be done. It isn’t always possible to totally remove voice from a song because of varying factors, such as compression, stereo image separation, frequency spectrum, etc. However, with some experimentation, good quality audio, and a little bit of luck, you can achieve satisfactory results.
1. Winamp Plugin: AnalogX Vocal Remover
If you use the Winamp software media player for playing your music collection, then AnalogX Vocal Remover can be installed in your plugins folder to remove vocals. Once installed, simply go to Options > Preferences > DSP/effect to choose the plugin. The interface is very easy to use as there’s just a slider bar to control the amount of audio processing.
2. Wavosaur
As well as being a good audio editor, Wavosaur can also be used to remove vocals from songs. Once you have imported your audio file into Wavosaur, you can use the Voice Remover tool to automatically process the file. As with all voice removal software, the results you get will depend on various factors such as the type of music, how compressed it is, and the quality of the audio source.
3. Audacity VST Plugin: Center Pan Remover
Center Pan Remover (download) is a Nyquist plugin for the very popular Audacity audio editor. This plugin works best on audio files where the vocals are near to the center of the stereo field. Center Pan Remover automates the process of splitting the stereo image and track inversion. Simply copy the plugin into the Audacity plugins folder to see the option in Audacity’s effects menu.
4. Karaoke Anything
Karaoke Anything is an audio player that does a decent job of removing vocals from music tracks. It can be used for MP3 files or entire audio CDs. The interface is user-friendly and you can use a slider bar to control the amount of audio processing. Unfortunately Karaoke Anything isn’t capable of saving what you hear. However, if you want a basic audio player for MP3 files and audio CDs that can remove vocals, then Karaoke Anything is a good tool to keep in your digital audio toolbox.