Muffled vocals with channel extractor

[gabrielv78965247]

So, 7 months ago i've tried to remove vocals from Tarja Turunen's song

more specifically, i've been focusing on "Innocence"

a long time ago i did remove them kinda nicely with Fruity Loops, but a week ago i returned and i tweaked FL and removed even more, but the instrumentals got a bit "noisy and hard" instead of smooth and clear

So i tried Audition, when i used the channel extractor as the video said, i was surprised, but then i began to realize the errors

there is a muffled backtrack that accompanies her voice, and when it reaches a certain volume, the muffle stop and her voice appears for a second

so i think that's probably her voice, so i used the acapella track to extract her voice, and the drums and piano were still there, but worse, the muffle was also there, i don't know what it is but it's annoying me a lot

i'm an extreme noob in this software, and i'm very frustrated because i've tried 3 different softwares to remove the vocals on this song, which is one of the most important songs of my life

So please, if anyone has any solutions, or tips, anything at all, please leave it here, it would be really helpful for me, thank you

[ryclark]

Unfortunately it will probably not be possible to get the result that you would like with any software. Audition's Centre Channel Extractor is one of the best. But, as you have discovered, a solo voice isn't necessarily the only thing recorded in the centre of a stereo track. So you will always also get unwanted sounds left behind whatever you do. Or when trying to remove those you end up with a not perfect version of the solo voice.

[gabrielv78965247]

But those muffles, it's the vocal, i'm pretty sure

i was able to remove vocals using Audacity and then i polished usin FL Studio, which of course made the instrumentals sound a lot more hard and solid, but i guess i can find the balance, but i'll lose the bass

are there any tips for that? any tools to mess with? any specific sound frequency?

the same muffle is in other songs too, so it's either default of Audacity or i'm doing something wrong

@Edit i noticed that this muffle is also present on the instruments, so it's not the vocal

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

gabrielv78965247  wrote

But those muffles, it's the vocal, i'm pretty sure

@Edit i noticed that this muffle is also present on the instruments, so it's not the vocal

Yes, it's called 'reverb'... and almost certainly on everything in the center. It's generally the reason that center track extracting is less than perfect. Perversely, you might do slightly better with Audacity/FL, as their inferior results 'grab' more of the stereo field in the center, possibly taking a bit of the reverb with it. Audition's extractor is rather more precise, though.

[gabrielv78965247]

Yes, Audition's voice remover is very precise, and doesn't damage the instrumentals

but on the other side, if it isn't perfect, the instrumental gets very weird and that "reverb" is really annoying, some songs i can't fix even with polishing on FL Studio, they actually were better if i only used FL to remove

i think this might be an issue with Tarja's songs actually, the way they are recorded, some songs work really good, some doesn't work at all

Well, any tips on how to reduce reverb?

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

gabrielv78965247  wrote

Well, any tips on how to reduce reverb?

I'm afraid not. What you have is a time-delayed version of the original signal laid over the top of itself, so there's no chance of being able to differentiate one from the other - hence no effective removal techniques. The de-reverb algorithms that some software offers simply don't work when there's anything similar to what's being removed in the track; the best they can do is remove a bit of 'bloom' from dialogue signals recorded in over-reverberant rooms when there's nothing else going on. And quite frankly they don't do a proper job of that either!

[gabrielv78965247]

To this point, i'm willing to try anything to make that instrumental born, how do i remove the bloom?

Edit: I noticed that when she sings on high-pitch, the software kind of "cuts" her voice while she speaking, like a phone call with bad signal

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

How much experimenting with the settings on the Center Channel Extractor have you tried? Altering the FFT size and the range it covers can make a significant difference to how it responds. And because every vocal and the way it's been treated in the mix is different,  you have to experiment - there's no way around that.

[gabrielv78965247]

That sounds interesting, what exactly does FFT do?

[gabrielv78965247 · Accepted solution]

I'm almost giving up on this

can anyone put the Innocence's track on Audition and see what i am talking about please? i'm out of ideas

fyi, not any FFT setting worked

Edit: i've put FFT on max, and that muffled sound is still there but i can barely hear it, it's the best version i could make so far, but it's still a bit "ew", any more tweaks i should know?

[ryclark]

I don't think that you are going to get anything better. You are asking for the impossible IMHO.

[gabrielv78965247]

I'd like to thank everyone for the help

i've managed to sucessfully make a good vocal-removed instrumental of Innocence

if anyone wants to check: here it goes: Tarja - Innocence [Instrumental] - YouTube