Does anyone know of some blinding pro-level software to remove vinyl rumble? What about vocals?

October 4, 2004 1:56 PM

Digital Music: Anyone know of some blinding pro-level software to remove vinyl rumble. (We're remastering old band music from vinyl for re-issue on CD; master tapes lost. Waves Renaissance software suite via Cubase takes too much of wanted bottom end out). Also: I can find software to remove vocals from a track; anyone know how I can isolate *only* vox from a wav?
posted by Pericles to Media & Arts (8 answers total)

I'm assuming you're on a PC, if so I might recommend Adobe Audition 1.5. Used to be Cool Edit Pro. The Noise Reduction features are very, very good. Auditon features Frequency and Phase Analysis which would allow you to pinpoint the rumble visually and then some Noise Reduction effects as well as Parametric Equalizers to cut the frequencies out

Additionally, the effect you're looking for, regarding isolation of vocals from a music track is a feature in Audition called Center Channel Extractor. There's a little bit on this stuff in these reviews

emusician

Another review
posted by jeremias at 2:19 PM on October 4, 2004

Although i've never used it, I was once recommended Magix Audio Cleaning Lab. It's unlikely to be the best top-end utility, but it might be worth a try.

Alternatively, if you can fourier transform the track and identify the rumble frequency, you can try to notch filter manually with an EQ plug-in.
posted by nylon at 2:24 PM on October 4, 2004

oops, jeremias got there first. Sorry for the echo.
posted by nylon at 2:26 PM on October 4, 2004

just wanted to say that jeremias is totally right, and even a super-high-end studio should have "Audition" around for its noise removal power.

The most recent version even allows you to look at a spectral freq vs. time graph and draw a marqee box over which frequencies you want to "select."

You can also noise remove on certain frequencies, to keep that nice low-end.
posted by plexiwatt at 3:19 PM on October 4, 2004

Regarding keeping only the vocal track... Strictly speaking from a mathematical point of view if T = track and Tv = Track minus vocal then vocal = T - Tv. Cool Edit, as I recall, had the ability to do this kind of operation. It's been a Loooooong time but as I recall it was often used to remove bleed from drum mics. There may be some other programs that can do that kind of thing (subtract one channel from another). If not, well, maybe I could whip something up. It's sufficiently interesting to warrant trying.

What do you use to remove vocals from a track? I use selective filtering of various kinds, with various amounts of success.
posted by RustyBrooks at 3:43 PM on October 4, 2004

Another vote for Audition, unless you can find someone with a SADiE around...

wrt isolating the vocal - this is not easy. In fact, it's nigh-on impossible.

If the vocal is recorded dead-center on a stereo track, you can remove it from the track using the phase trick - reverse the phase of one channel and sum the channels to mono. Anything else in the middle of the stereo spectrum will disappear too though (kick drums, snares, often), and any stereo processing on the vocal (reverb, chorus, etc.) will remain.

Once you have this "instrumental" version, you can subtract it from the complete version and theoretically be left with just the vocal. In practise, it never works.
posted by benzo8 at 3:53 AM on October 5, 2004

Audacity does a lot of stuff for me, although I'm not sure if it's "pro level" or not. I do know it's Free, so you have nothing to lose by trying it.
posted by shepd at 7:29 AM on October 5, 2004

Best answer: Isolating Vocals from Background Music
posted by fuzz at 12:33 PM on October 5, 2004