Is there a program that will...

[HeavenWater]

allow me to mess around with mp3s sorta like the thing recording studios use
to take out vocals or guitar or drums. please help its for a project.

[lordsmurf]

Not really.

That "thing" is possible because the audio is not a single stream in a single file.

Your MP3, on the other hand, is a single stream.

[guns1inger]

If you had a clean wav source, you could look at the analogX vocal remover plugin. I can sometimes produce quite good results. It is based on the idea that often the vocals are recorded evenly on both tracks. By reversing the wav form of one track, it effectively cancels anything that same on the other track. There are a couple of caveats though.

1. It will remove anything that is the same of both tracks. This could be percussion, guitar etc. I have had some pretty weedy sounding output from this plugin because there was little seperation to begin with.

2. MP3 sucks as a source for this type of work because the compression algorythm muddies and disturbs the stereo seperation. Generally you end up with a reedy warble left on the track that you can't get rid of.

[Kurt S]

Recording studios do not have programs to remove vocals, guitars, or drums. They start with the original multitrack recordings which have all the instruments separated into individual tracks.

Analog X's program removes vocals by inverting one channel and mixing them back together. this phase cancelation method is questionable at best. it will also remove anything else that was mixed in mono such as the bass guitar and kickdrum tracks.

You might give Adobe Audition a try. It has a center channel removal filter that works better then the phase cancelation method.