In the post Noise Cancellation – An Example of Mediated Audio Reality? we saw how background or intrusive environmental noise could be removed using noise cancelling headphones. In this post, you’ll learn a simple trick for diminishing an audio reality by removing a vocal track from a musical jingle.
Noise cancellation may be thought of adding the complement of everything that is not the desired signal component to an audio feed in order to remove the unwanted noise component. This same idea can be used as the basis of a crude attempt to remove a mono vocal signal from a stereo audio track by creating our own inverse of the vocal track and then subtracting it from the original mix.
SAQ: Describe an algorithm corresponding to the first part of method suggested in the How to Remove Vocals from a Song Using Audacity video for removing a vocal track from stereo music track. How does the algorithm compare to the algorithm you described for the noise cancelling system?
SAQ: The technique described in the video relies on the track having a mono vocal signal and stereo backing track. The simple technique also lost some of the bass when the vocals were removed. How was the algorithm modified to try to preserve the bass component? How does the modification preserve the bass component?
