I have a CD with vocals on it. The vocals are buried in the music because whoever mastered it compressed it to the max. My question is ... is there anyway to bring the vocals out without disturbing the music? Does Realband, or, Power Tracks, for that matter, have that capability? This is where it would be handy if RB had the ability to split out audio tracks to repair damage or change things, kind of like Melodyne does.

Are you trying to decipher the words, or trying to remix the vocals?

If you are trying to remix it, you're often better off spending the time trying to get the original tracks than finding a magic trick.
If you are trying to decipher the lyrics the approach may be much different.

Why exactly do you want to "bring the vocals out without disturbing the music" ?

I think the short answer, regardless of what you are trying to do, is no. Once everything is mixed it can be difficult to impossible to extract or modify specific elements. Kinda like trying to remove the eggs from cake batter after you have already mixed it!

load 2 tracks of the song into real band and load the knockout vst into one then re-mix and render all tracks to stereo wav file

you can isolate the center channel with something like

http://blog.wavosaur.com/extract-vocals-from-song-with-kn0ck0ut-vst/

http://www.cloneensemble.com/vt_main.htm

http://www.elevayta.net/product13.htm

...

Hi
As said like trying to unmake a cake .
There are programs around like Audacity (free) that allow you to cancel the vocal out some what!
The effectiveness depends a bit on how much processing has been done to the original, vocal doubling etc
They all work basically by re recording the song shifting the recorded version out of phase and playing the 2 back together the resulting phase cancellation reduces the vocal frequencies
This is often used for making Karaoke backing tracks from recordings.
I have not found it very good, as it seem to cause a sqedging effect on the music around the mid range, and of course you have to re sing the vocal or remix it in from your source and rerecord again.

Sorry I cant be more positive
Have fun
Mike

Thanks everyone. And special thanks to Pipeline. I'll give it a try.

Hi Bob. Sorry I didn't answer your post reply. I've discovered that the company who mastered the CD compressed the heck out of it. The music is out there but in the process kind of put the vocals in the background a tad when they should have been out front. You can hear them clearly but they don't stand out like vocals should.

I'm going to do some research on Melodyne. If I remember right they have a vsti plug-in with the feature I need. With the Jbridge I should be able to make it work in Realband.

Russell, I believe that Melodyne comes in both 64 and 32 bit versions, thus jBridge will not be needed.

Essentially NO.

I like the analogy of un-baking a cake.

You said:

Once you compress the tracks and mix them, and print them to a wave.. the damage is done and can not be undone. Unless you have the original dry tracks, there's no way to go back. If you have the original un-effected tracks, you can start over. Without the original tracks, you're up the proverbial creek without a means of propulsion.

Even Melodyne can't help you with that, assuming you can cleanly split out the original tracks, you still have "tracks compressed to the max" and there's no way to uncompress them now. Back to the un-baking the cake thing... not only are you asking to separate the ingredients, you're also asking to put the eggs back in their shells.

The PG programmer, James and I, have discussed that exact problem. As mid phantom channel information can be digitally removed, it's also theoretically possible to edit the remaining tracks although not perfectly.

The circuit necessary is a Differential Amplifier composed of an Operational Amplifier and 4 resistors. I boast years of experience with the circuit.

Apparently, we are alone in foreseeing the applications in audio.

Donny

did you try those acapella vst on the one track to extract the center channel - you can save the acapella track then just bring it back in as mono - eq it - and lay it over original with eq

melodyne vst don't work with real band as it needs synchronization and bpm

I downloaded Knockout but haven't tried it yet. Been too tired to even think about it due to the radiation treatments. However, thursday is my last day of radiation so things are looking up. Once I get some fire back in my blood I'll attack it and see how it goes.

I was looking at Celemony. It's has the ability to pull out the tracks and let you tweak them. I didn't fully understand what I was reading but the program works as a stand alone or VST. It's not too expensive either. Something to think about.

Web page about Melodyne and Celemony <---Click here.

there's the address of what I was looking at last night.

Dang! I want that program. And, believe it or not, I can almost do everything Celemony and Melodyne can do with Realband only it's a bit on the clunky side and takes more than twice as long to complete a task than Melodyne/Celemony can. Melodyne, for example, can tweak, very easily, just about every aspect of a note with just the click of a mouse. What's so cool is the way it edits vocal tracks, almost, automatically. You just select one of two pitch settings, select the setting you want to use, slide the pitch correction tool over to all the way, if you wish, click on the box Melodyne says is the key signature of the song, and, whammo! Click OK and the all the selected track is instantly aligned with the key.

I was really shocked at the subtle differences the program makes. And you don't have to rely on using numbers for the alignment. It does it for you. Man! I could go on and on about it. These particular tools are really designed for serious studios. They claim that, as a VST, they're compatible with almost any DAW. It's that term, Almost any DAW", that worries me. But I saw where they sell a connector tool like Jbridge that, supposedly, will make it work with any DAW. I didn't see a price. Where Jbridge is a 64 bit compatibility tool the one they sell is a DAW campatibility tool.

I'll tell you, the programs are priced from $79 up to $1499 and maybe more. Like I said, it's a serious recording tool.

Russ, one thing to remember is that the least expensive versions of Melodyne are monophonic only. This is great for single note instruments like horns, bass, vocals etc but not for rhythm guitars, pianos, horn sections or any other polyphonic instruments.

You probably already knew this but I thought that I should bring it up.

Thanks for the insight Mario. I'll take all I can get. And anyway I'll get over the GAS once I finish my last treatment tomorrow.

You are in our prayers my friend!

Yeah, What Mario said, Russ! ^^^