Karaokify My Dad

December 17, 2016 9:54 AM

Help make my dad's Christmas dreams come true with a Julius LaRosa karaoke songfest.

My dad, bless his heart, would dearly love to sing along karaoke-style to tracks 2, 3, 6, 7, 10, 13, 15, and 19 on Julius LaRosa's Golden Classics.

I ripped the tracks from the CD and tried VocalRemoverPro.

I also downloaded Audacity and tried following these instructions.

But in both cases, the original vocals were still clearly audible.

Is there another service or process that could work, or (better yet) can you help me connect with an audio editor who will do this for me? Difficulty level: Need it by Christmas Day.

posted by ottereroticist to Computers & Internet (1 answer total)

Both the online VocalRemover and the Audacity instructions rely on using a phasing trick (SoundonSound article explaining the process a little more thoroughly with some possible tips) - unfortunately, the results are usually (IME) never astounding (you will almost always hear some of the original vocals), and it tends to work best on music recorded after about 1970, because of how music began to be recorded and mixed.

The LaRosa recordings are old enough that they may not have even been stereo in the first place, so the phase trick might not work well at all.

Is there another service or process that could work,

Not really, no. You might be able to get better results with some tweaks and tricks and judicious tone shaping available in more advanced audio programs like ProTools.

I would consult a pro/semi-pro for this, and while I can't recommend anyone specific, if you actually live in Portland as it says in your profile, there should be a ton of recording studios with the technology to take a whack at this. Whether they have time to get to this in the next week is another question, unfortunately. But it should only take a couple of hours to do, and about half an hour to see if they can even make it happen at all.
posted by soundguy99 at 11:22 PM on December 17, 2016