Background Music Removal

n1koolkat · Member Joined: 02 Sep 2002

I know that it is possible to remove (or at least significantly reduce) the voice from a clip and retain the music. Is it possible to do the opposite ie. retain the voice and removed the background music? I need to retain the words (which were recorded at a party) and add a different background to it. I currently have adobe audition but can't seem to retain the voice with it. Does anyone know of an alternative method. Thanks

guns1inger · Member Joined: 01 Apr 2004 Location: Miskatonic U

This is a long shot, but hear me out.

The idea for vocal removal is that anything common to both channels can be removed by inverting one channel, and overlaying it on the other.

What you have left is the original audio tracks, minus the vocals.

In theory, therefore, if you overlaid these onto the original audio tracks, they should cancel out everything BUT the vocals.

Where you are likely to run into a wall is the fact that you really need good stereo seperation on everything but the vocals to get a good clean result. If what you have is, say, a DV clip of a birthday party, recorded with the camera microphone, you really have little more than mono audio on a stereo track because the mic doesn't do good seperation.

But please give it a try - I'd love to know if the theory works.
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mrtunes · Member Joined: 16 Aug 2004 Location: Toronto, Canada

in adobe audition i think there is a feature that lets you isolate different bands on the frequency spectrum. if any program can come close to doing what you ask, it's this one.

in pro 5.1 films this is an easy task - all your dialogue would be found in the center channel and the music is in the L and R speakers