Subject:Vocal Eraser Useless

Posted by: thirdnostril

Date:1/22/2008 1:08:58 PM

Is anyone else having a problem with the izotope Vocal Eraser in SF Audio Studio?

It causes the most God-awful stuttering effect on the whole file. All of the presets do the same thing. It's completely unuseable.

Anyone know what I'm doing wrong? Thanks.

Subject:RE: Vocal Eraser Useless

Reply by: farss

Date:1/22/2008 1:19:39 PM

"Anyone know what I'm doing wrong?"

Yes, trying to remove vocals. It's a crap shoot at best, for fundamental reasons it mostly cannot be done. Most modern mixes make it really impossible to even get close to removing vocals.

Bob.

Subject:RE: Vocal Eraser Useless

Reply by: thirdnostril

Date:1/22/2008 3:04:08 PM

Any replies from someone with an emotional age over seven?

Subject:RE: Vocal Eraser Useless

Reply by: Kennymusicman

Date:1/22/2008 3:14:01 PM

From another thread which is very similar... Also, for what it's worth - Bob is one of the great members on here - and has more experience than you and I combined (and I've been doing my trade for years as it is!)


OK - couple of things here. 1) Mastering bundle is available on other Sony software, that is post-sf9 release (ie, Vegas 8)

No, the vocal remover is not on the full SForge-it doesn't need to be.

Why? Either you are removing vox by selective EQ'ing (not good), or
b) by a technique known as centre-channel cancellation. It you know about phasing and stuff, then you have an idea how this works. If not, just look in the channel converter for the preset "vocal cut" under stereo to stereo - it does the donkey for you.

Do such techniques work - SOMETIMES. It removes central content, which is typical vocals and some sections of drums - but with every song being different, YMMV.

HTH

Ken

Subject:RE: Vocal Eraser Useless

Reply by: farss

Date:1/22/2008 4:14:31 PM

Just to flesh that out a bit.
One of the common problems today is the use of reverb that pans the reflections across both channels (SF has such an FX).

So if you have a vocal that is dead centre then the centre channel cancellation trick will cancel out the vocal but not the reverb, which does leave you with a very wierd result. You'll also more likely than not find some instruments in the centre channel or parts of them. Eq is even more hit and miss. The human voice is in the same frequncy range as many instruments.

No doubt the iZotopes tech is somewhat more advanced using FFT and may in some situations be better than what you can do manually. However with todays mixes you really can't get even close to getting a good result.

Many times people here and elsewhere ask this same question over and over which is why you'll get some pretty harsh answers. At one time on the Vegas audio forum it was a bit of a running joke.
What's not well understood also is that most karaoke mixes are done from the original multitrack master tapes. Get your hands on them and you're set.

Of course I could be wrong, if iZotopes have found some magic way to cancel out vocals or better yet remove backing music I'll pay very serious money for that. I have clients who've spent very large sums of money re-recording hours of material because there was no way to do this. I've sent them big bills just for removing a couple of notes from behind speech, if there's some magic way to do this I'm all ears, Amex card at the ready :)

Bob.

Subject:RE: Vocal Eraser Useless

Reply by: Geoff_Wood

Date:1/22/2008 6:38:07 PM

Yes, 'fancy' vocal techniques render Vocal Removal hopeless. However excellent results can be obtained on a solid centre vocal with straightforward reverb.

I just tried to do Lenny Kravitz 'American Woman' which was totally hopeless. The man vox is a combination of centre left and right tracks, with reverb and other stuff on top of that.

I tried www.analogx.com 's basic one, and www.cloneensemble.com 's sophisticated ones...

Tried the SFAS Izotope one, but it wouldn't register.

geoff

Subject:RE: Vocal Eraser Useless

Reply by: thirdnostril

Date:1/23/2008 8:52:38 AM

I know all about "taking the eggs out of the cake after it's baked." This is hardly my first time here. I simply assumed that if one of the main selling points for Audio Studio 9 was a Vocal Eraser (it doesn't even come in the full SF9), that it would work with SOME level of quality. What's coming out is completely unuseable, stuttering garbage. I can understand if there are reverb trails left over. But ruining the whole file? What gives? This isn't some afterthought add-in they had lying around. This is one of the star attractions of the app.

My wife wants to practice her singing. I wanted to make her some karaoke tracks of her favorite songs. SFAS9 promised a Vocal Eraser. Of COURSE I assumed there was some new technology involved, precisely BECAUSE I know how hard it traditionally has been...and still is, apparently. I just wouldn't have bothered to pay $40 to upgrade when Studio version 6 did everything I wanted, had I known the Vocal Eraser was worse than nothing.

Thanks for your time.

Subject:RE: Vocal Eraser Useless

Reply by: farss

Date:1/23/2008 2:35:24 PM

Maybe before writing it off you could try to determine if something is broken or it's just not as good as you'd like. A simple test with a file that it should be able to process with zero problems might reveal something. I'd try Tone A hard left, Tone B dead centre and tone C hard right. If it can't process that perfectly I'd suspect something is simply broken.

Bob.

Subject:RE: Vocal Eraser Useless

Reply by: Geoff_Wood

Date:1/23/2008 6:52:17 PM

It isn't worse than nothing. It sounds like you have some distinct technical problem with either Vocal Eraser or SFAS.

geoff

Subject:RE: Vocal Eraser Useless

Reply by: thirdnostril

Date:1/29/2008 2:45:59 PM

Tried that. Vocal was about 33% removed. Other tracks sound double-flanged, if that makes any sense.

Woof.