Hi Martyn,

You are correct. If you know who has the original recordings, the best way by far is to get your hands on the original multi-track Logic files and remix and master it without the vocals. (Whether the Logic session can be imported into another DAW program you may have, is a question for one of the DAW experts)

If you do have any other DAW, you can try splitting the stereo track into 2 mono tracks, invert the phase of one of them - then pan both tracks to the center. So you lose the stereo field, and (through phase-canceling) anything that was panned dead-center on the original stereo tracks - which often includes vocals.

The phase-canceling trick works in varying degrees, based completely on how the original recording used the stereo field. It can only diminish things that are dead-center in the stereo image. Often lead vocal is right down the middle, so by reversing the phase of just one channel you cancel out anything that was in the center. Unfortunately that often includes other prominent parts of the sound - kick drum, bass guitar, keyboards, etc. So even if they remove the lead vocal, there is still a giant hole in the mix from other instruments that have been phase-cancelled out. Also you will never get rid of the ghosts in anything modern that uses a nice stereo reverb. Even if you could eliminate the lead-vocal, you will still hear it mixed back through the reverb.

If you don't have a DAW of some kind, you can achieve a similar result using hardware (either using a mixer with phase switches on the channels, or soldering up a phase-reversal XLR cable)

Ok thanks. I think it's going to be easiest for me to just try and get the originals and get the vocal track removed then.

Martyn

Quote audiokid:
You're kidding me? Lets rephrase that then. What you mean is : you are very careful to never go over Zero/ +1 on the DAW 2-bus (EVER!) To avoid digital zzz error you make sure you are on a constant watch from track one , two, three etc and are (tell me I'm wrong?) forced to pull faders down all the time to compensate for 2-bus overload? The greater the track count, the worse it is?I'm glad you do not have this problem but it is creating a lot of terrible sounding music. Rainer, Please be so kind to send me a track that you would be comfortable for me to test. One that you are certain cannot be improved in your studio and your equipment? AIFF or MP3 makes no difference to me. Gain is gain for this example. I would love to hear what you are doing now? I'm an optimist :)
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Thanks for sacking me!!
I have been away for surgery of my knee for two week and when I came home from rehab, up north of Germany, I visited recording org only to see that I was kicked off the board of moderators.
Well, your decision… and it suits me more then you can imagine.

I have it up to here with your drivel and semi-knowledge that you keep shouting out like above quote and many other amateurish questions are proving all too well. It took me some time to recognize that you are by no means the person who is able to run RO as it should be done. With your constant presenting of products and the suspicious way in which you try to influence opinions, indirectly and rather directly, makes me believe that you are actually selling out, receiving benefits from manufacturers in return. Everybody knows that this is only possible, because of the great job the shrinking number of professionals / mods do. A job you could never handle by yourself. I just wished, you would treat your Staff accordingly.

This is too stupid. I do not want to be a part of this, anymore.

Good Day!!

Rainer Klaeger (Big K )