How to Remove Vocals or Create Karaoke from a Song using Adobe Audition and Audacity

If you are looking for ways how to create a karaoke version or removing vocals from a music track, then it can be done using Adobe Audition or Audacity.

Creating Karaoke version in Adobe Audition

In this step, you can either select to create a karaoke version that removes the vocals from a song. Below are the steps:

1.) Launch Adobe Audition.
2.) Load up/Open up the audio in Adobe Audition editor view (File == Open). The most recommended is audio CD wav 16 bit resolution. However you can also work with an MP3 file type, although the quality is NOT that good as compared with the wav version.

3.) Once the audio has been completely loaded, press Control- A to select the entire audio waveform.

4.) Go to Effects == Filters == Center Channel Extractor.

5.) You have two options at the Presets to look at, these are the:

a.) Karaoke (Drop vocals 20dB)
b.) Vocal Remove

Screenshot (using Karaoke Drop vocals 20dB presets):

6.) Try selecting the “Karaoke” presets and then click “Preview” to listen. You might notice that it won’t completely remove the vocals. For most singers, this is enough; because once the original vocals on the recording have been substantially dropped (like 20dB), they can comfortably sing along with that karaoke version.

One good tip is that; it is not advisable to go overboard with the Center Channel Extractor settings in order to “completely” remove the vocals. It will NOT sound nice and your minus-one/karaoke version will sound worse.

7.) Alternatively, you can try “Vocal Remove” presets and see if you are happy with the settings (by clicking Preview and listening to the rendered minus one version).

8.) Once you have applied the settings to the entire waveform, it is now the time to save it. Go to File == Save As, and then type the file name. Do not forget to save it as “Windows PCM (*.wav)”, this will save it as a lossless audio format.

Warning: It is very important to “Save As” always particularly if you are working with original audio. It is because if you directly save your work from Adobe Audition editor, it will “overwrite” the original and you won’t be able to recover it again.

Below are the important technical settings of Center Channel Extractor that you should know:

Center = Get audio phased at: Most vocals are panned in the center during mixing process, so it is why this is set to center because this is where the vocals are located. If the vocals are panned to either right or left, not in the center, then it won’t be removed with “Center” settings then you need to set it accurately to the correct location.

Frequency range = this is the estimated and effective vocal related frequencies to be removed.

Center channel level = the lower the settings (more negative dB), the more vocals will be removed. For example, it is obvious that karaoke still has substantial amount of vocals left as compared to “vocal remove” presets, and karaoke use a -20dB Center channel level while Vocal remove uses -40dB.

The rest of the settings can be left at its default, feel free to experiment further with the rest of the settings. Be careful not to overwrite your original audio when working with it. It’s important to “Save As” when you are saving any edited audio.

Removing Vocals in Audacity

Audacity is free software that you can use to remove vocals. However there is a catch, some Audacity versions (like in Windows XP) does not yet include the vocal removal feature. I also tried using the latest Audacity version in Windows 7 but do not seem to the remove vocals very well.

I have tried with other software solutions such as plug-in in Reaper and still do not remove vocals properly. All of them degrades the quality of the original recording (such as filtering the bass too much) and introduces a lot of audio artifacts/noises.

In this tutorial, you will learn the most effective way of removing vocals without depending on a plug-in or your software audio editing features. The result is still clean and close to the original source as much as possible. Let’s get started.

The IMPORTANT Audio Requirements

First, make sure you are NOT working with an MP3 file. If you want to remove the vocals of an MP3 file, first convert that one to 24-bit/44.1KHz WAV file. The following are the procedures:

1.) Launch Audacity.
2.) Go to Edit – Preferences.
3.) Select “File Format” tab.
4.) Under “Uncompressed Export Format”, select “Other”.
And under “Header”, select “WAV (Microsoft)” and in the “Encoding” select “Signed 24-bit PCM”.
5.) Click OK.
6.) Go to File – Open, browse to the MP3 file then click Open. This will load the MP3 waveform in Audacity.
7.) Then go to File – Export as WAV. Save it to a location where you can access it easily.
8.) Double check whether the file is now actually a 24-bit WAV. Right click on the exported WAV, click “Properties” and go to summary tab.

Split the stereo track to mono

Now you are working with 24-bit audio, you are now ready to remove the vocals on it. The first step is to split the stereo track to mono. Refer to the procedures below:

1.) Launch Audacity and load the 24-bit wav file that you want the vocals to be removed.

2.) Click the black triangle drop down in your track control tools, and click “Split stereo track”. See screenshot below:

3.) Audacity would then split the stereo tracks into two tracks. Now you need to change them to mono. Click the black triangle again on each track and click “Mono”. Do for both tracks. Below is a screenshot of the split tracks now in mono:

For absolute beginners in digital audio, you can read this tutorial on the difference of stereo and mono vocal recording. Mono is one channel audio while stereo is two channels.

Invert and Apply High pass filter on one channel

Removing vocals works by combining two opposing channels. By inverting one channel and mixing it with the other, commonalities in the center would be cancelled. Vocals are usually panned in the center of the stereo mix so they will be drastically reduced in amplitude and presence due to this cancellation. Although it won’t exactly remove 100% of the vocals as you can still hear the tiny vocal reverb left. This is how removing the vocals from the music should work.

If you are removing certain band of frequencies in the inverted channel; the frequencies removed would be retain after mixing. For example, most vocals are found in this frequency range 300Hz to 3000Hz. If you are filtering 300Hz below which can be done by using a high pass filter (read: What does a high pass filter do? ), then 300Hz below would not be cancelled after mixing and you retain the bass content in the center while removing the vocals.

Follow the steps below:

1.) In the Audacity project where there are two mono waveforms, select the first track only.

2.) In Audacity, go to Effect – Invert. This will invert the first channel. Make sure this effect is only applied to the first channel. Always leave the second track/channel untouched by any effects processing.

3.) After inverting, apply high pass filter on the first channel only. Go to Effect – High pass filter. And then in the cutoff frequency select 300Hz.

4.) Try playing the mix (hitting the Audacity play button). You will notice that the center channels particularly the vocals section are now drastically reduced. It now sounds like a perfect minus one.

5.) This is not yet complete; most users would be creating a minus one version of their favorite song either in WAV or MP3 format.

Go to Edit – Select All. And then go to Project – Quick Mix. This will combine two mono waveforms into one mono waveform. See screenshot below:

It’s not over yet. You need to change the audio format from mono 24-bit/44.1KHz WAV to Stereo MP3 format so that you can play this with your MP3 player to sing along or use this to create an audio CD.

Converting back to Stereo MP3 format

1.) In Audacity, Go to Edit – Select All.
2.) Then go to Edit – Duplicate. There should now be two mono waveforms in Audacity after duplication.
3.) In the black triangle for the first channel change mono to LEFT channel.
4.) Then in the second channel, change mono also to RIGHT channel. This is how it looks like after adjustments (take note of the change from “mono” to either LEFT or RIGHT channel, enclosed in red box)

5.) Go to Project – Quick Mix. It will now be rendered back to STEREO format.

6.) To save as MP3, go to File – Export as MP3, assign a file name. If you see some errors in the MP3 conversion process because it ask for a missing file. You need to download lame_enc.dll first to your computer and let Audacity locate it.

You have successfully created a minus-one version of the music (by removing the vocals from the song). This should sound better than any other methods. As an illustration, listen for the differences between the original and the “removed vocal” version:

Vocals removed:

You can listen to the original MP3 (with vocals) in the license music page (look for “Stay Cool My Friend” track).

Content last updated on October 13, 2012