Technically, it's next to impossible to remove specific sound from a waveform containing many sounds. The problem is similar to trying to find which car the city pollution belongs to.
That said, 'voice removal' techniques do exist, and rely on a few principles:
- If you take any digital mono sound, invert (or flip) the phase and mix-it over itself you will obtain a silent file. (-5 + 5 = 0)
- If you take a stereo sound, invert the phase of the left channel and mix-it over the right channel, you will obtain the sound of the difference between the left and right channel (-3 + 5 = 2) or, if you will, the stereo content minus the mono content.
- Voice is usually in mono, while most of the music is stereo.
To perform basic voice removal, follow these steps in any sound editing software:
- Open a stereo sound file
- Open another copy of the sound file and swap the channels (left becomes right, and vice versa)
- Invert the phase of both channels in your second sound file
- Mix your second soundfile back into your original sound file (mix at 100% level (or 0dB) on both your source and destination)
You will only hear the stereo sounds. If the voice was mono and dead center, you won't hear it. Unfortunately, you will also have chopped off any other mono sounds which will likely wreck the joy of listening to it. Furthermore, in real life chances are that stereo reverb was added to the voice so you will still hear that, as well as stereo choruses.
You could probaly push the technique further, such as limiting the process to the normal human range frequencies so that lower bass and higher treble sounds remain untouched, etc.
Lots of fun, but probably not what you were looking for.
TL;DR The best technique remain to sneak into a studio, steal the original instrument recordings and remix them without the voice. And that's what they do when they release "instrumentals".
How about filter out the voice and then subtracting that? – Nifle – 2010-01-27T17:47:05.680
There must be software out there like this fueling the karaoke industry. – JMD – 2010-01-27T17:50:04.237
@Nifle, is there any software which gives such an advanced options? if you know please mention its name .. thank you – InfantPro'Aravind' – 2010-01-27T18:04:20.430
@JMD, yup .. hoping the same .. I have posted this Q .. – InfantPro'Aravind' – 2010-01-27T18:05:01.817
2Actually, most commercial karaoke tracks come from the karaoke company either licensing the original tracks from the record label (minus the vocal tracks) or else re-recording the music in house. – BBlake – 2010-01-27T18:06:14.073
@BBlake, Ohk .. so that might be the reason .. I am not successful so far .. – InfantPro'Aravind' – 2010-01-27T18:08:33.617
Been discussed a couple of times on Stack Overflow (in a programming context, of course). One example here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/502475/separation-of-singing-voice-from-music . Short version: sometimes you can leverage the different left/right mixing of the vocal (usually centered) and instrumental (usually balanced to one side or the other) parts.
– dmckee --- ex-moderator kitten – 2010-01-27T18:43:22.087