Izotope Vocal Eraser -Sound Forge - PC - MAGIX Community Forums Archive

Subject:Izotope Vocal Eraser Posted by: Kit Date:11/22/2009 10:13:48 PM Hello, what's the cheapest, legitimate way of getting this plugin to work fully. Thanks, Kit
Subject:RE: Izotope Vocal Eraser Reply by: colinu Date:11/23/2009 7:22:43 AM Give Sony Creative Software a call. They may give you a "better than upgrade" price on Audio Studio if you are a registed user of Sound Forge.
Subject:RE: Izotope Vocal Eraser Reply by: tta Date:11/23/2009 10:59:10 PM I just installed Sound Forge Audio Studio 9 software and Vocal Eraser software. I tried several times to remove voices (choir) from a track on a CD. Confirmed that the track was correctly installed for voice removal and clicked the correct tool and received confirmation that vocal eraser worked. But playback is the same with each recording. Tried several times and I cannot get vocal eraser to work and I have been unable to find any user manual, troubleshooting comments, or operating information regarding Vocal Eraser. What's going on?
Subject:RE: Izotope Vocal Eraser Reply by: MarkWWWW Date:11/24/2009 5:38:10 AM You are probably expecting it to do something it doesn't really do. Despite being called a vocal remover it doesn't actually remove vocals - what these kinds of plugins actually do is to remove audio material that is panned dead centre, leaving behind the material that is panned wide left or right. (They do this by subtracting the left channel from the right channel). On a typical pop recording the lead vocal will normally be panned dead centre so these kinds of plugins will indeed remove some or all of the lead vocal. If the lead vocal is panned dead centre and has no treatment that has any width then it will be removed completely. If (as is usual these days) it is treated with something that has width (e.g. a stereo reverb) then this will be left behind as a sort of ghost of the lead vocal. Whether the result will be useful to you will depend a lot on what you are wanting to do with the vocal-removed version, as well as the characteristics of the original audio. And also, anything else panned to the centre will be removed too - in pop music typically bass, kick drum, maybe guitar or other solo instruments if there are any. The iZotope plugin is more sophisticated than many of these plugins as it has filters to isolate the vocal range for different kinds of voices, and it uses these to limit the cancellation to just the frequencies where the vocal will be found, leaving the higher and lower frequencies panned to the centre un-cancelled. In this way it avoids most of the adverse effects on the bass and kick drum that a simplistic plugin of this type would suffer from. But in your case you say you have a choir you want to remove. You are almost certainly going to be unable to do this. One of the main characteristics of a choir is that they are a physically large "instrument", with the sound coming from a broad range of locations that are spread out quite widely. It would be very unusual for a choir to be recorded without trying to capture this characteristic so it would be very unlikely that anyone would record a choir that didn't occupy a substantial portion of the stereo field - typically the choir would be recorded as wide as possible. Because of this, you will notice very little difference when you remove just the centre material. If you want to post a short example of the material you are working with somewhere so that we can have a listen we'll be able to tell you for sure, but the chances are you aren't going to be able to do what you want to do with this kind of material. Mark

You are probably expecting it to do something it doesn't really do.

Despite being called a vocal remover it doesn't actually remove vocals - what these kinds of plugins actually do is to remove audio material that is panned dead centre, leaving behind the material that is panned wide left or right. (They do this by subtracting the left channel from the right channel).

On a typical pop recording the lead vocal will normally be panned dead centre so these kinds of plugins will indeed remove some or all of the lead vocal. If the lead vocal is panned dead centre and has no treatment that has any width then it will be removed completely. If (as is usual these days) it is treated with something that has width (e.g. a stereo reverb) then this will be left behind as a sort of ghost of the lead vocal. Whether the result will be useful to you will depend a lot on what you are wanting to do with the vocal-removed version, as well as the characteristics of the original audio. And also, anything else panned to the centre will be removed too - in pop music typically bass, kick drum, maybe guitar or other solo instruments if there are any.

The iZotope plugin is more sophisticated than many of these plugins as it has filters to isolate the vocal range for different kinds of voices, and it uses these to limit the cancellation to just the frequencies where the vocal will be found, leaving the higher and lower frequencies panned to the centre un-cancelled. In this way it avoids most of the adverse effects on the bass and kick drum that a simplistic plugin of this type would suffer from.

But in your case you say you have a choir you want to remove. You are almost certainly going to be unable to do this. One of the main characteristics of a choir is that they are a physically large "instrument", with the sound coming from a broad range of locations that are spread out quite widely. It would be very unusual for a choir to be recorded without trying to capture this characteristic so it would be very unlikely that anyone would record a choir that didn't occupy a substantial portion of the stereo field - typically the choir would be recorded as wide as possible. Because of this, you will notice very little difference when you remove just the centre material.

If you want to post a short example of the material you are working with somewhere so that we can have a listen we'll be able to tell you for sure, but the chances are you aren't going to be able to do what you want to do with this kind of material.

Mark