Great developer. Indeed, we covered some of his work in the past. https://bedroomproducersblog.com/2020/12/07/bertom-audio-air-shelf/

www . adsrsounds . com/giveaways/win-ableton-live-11/?lucky=240724

https://www.izotope.com/en/learn/how-to-get-ozone-imager-free.html

Thanks James, your very welcome, thats a great tip there about Logic, or any DAW with a mid / side EQ, i’ve not tried that before, thanks for sharing it.
I think iZotope’s Music Rebalance is ok, but its early days & still not 100% perfect, but like you say about reduction processing, its better if you use it lightly. Also, you can remove the sides first in RX & then apply the processing to get an acapella. You end up with a more mono sound, but that can be helped with something like Ozone 9, which has a free stereo imager plug-in which is handy.
Theres another plug-in around for isolating just drum sounds, but the results sound a bit crude too ! A bit like an mp3 at a very low bitrate.
I think the way forward could be some kind of AI that could analyse the target frequency range of the sound to be isolated (from the original sound source) & reproduce or synthesise the missing elements of it afterwards to reproduce at least part of the original sound somehow & mix the two together to get a full fat sound instead of a thin washy sound.
The science & results at the moment are incredible, but things can only get better with new tech etc.
Some artists have started releasing “stems” of their songs now, which is awesome if you like the song 😊
I have this new version of Audacity now, i will try the isolation tool, i didn’t know about that, thanks.
The reverse phase method relies on studio & exact versions of the vocal & instrumental as well, i tried with a 12″ vinyl rip, so maybe a CD would be a better format to use.
Thanks for your always helpful info James, is always very much appreciated 👍

Hey PUREFIRE,

It’s great that something like Audacity is still around for free!

Thank you! That article was a while back; I’m glad you enjoyed it. I try to be as conversational as possible but still give enough helpful info (that’s the plan, at least, haha).

When I first saw people removing vocals from songs with Audacity, it was the same phase invert method you described, which is the same in Logic, and so on, but it was pretty crude, and at the time, it was good enough. They just wanted an instrumental to rap over. Audacity’s Vocal reduction/isolation tool now makes that easier but still a bit crude.

A clean acapella is harder; it’s not something I’ve spent much time on. You’re right; hard-panned stereo is easier to work with, but I’ve not seen anyone get amazing results, so if you find out the secret first, let me know! Haha. I like iZotope RX for any noise reduction, but I use it pretty lightly. Depending on the track and how busy it is, you can sometimes do pretty well just with Logic’s Channel EQ set to process side only and drop the gain completely, then add a second stereo EQ to cut everything but the vocal range. It’s not perfect by any means.

Thanks again; I tend to learn something from your comments; very helpful