Question regarding audio remixing

[T J]

I think it's called audio mixing...

Here's the thing. I have an audio book, it a good book but it has no music accompaniment. I have another audio book with the perfect music for it. This is the 21st century, surly there is a simple yet robust audio program that will let me strip music from one book and overlay it on the other.

Can anyone tell me the best program for what I'm looking to do here.

I just fiddled with Nero wave editor and Audacity but absolutly nothing came of it except for a headache.

Help please!

 

[JustAFriend]

www.reaper.fm

But I suspect you're really asking for a tool to magically (and automatically) suck the background music out of the audio file without the vocal.

Aint. Gonna. Happen. (except in movies and TV)

In a stereo .wav you have a squiggly waveform for the right channel and a squiggly waveform for the left channel. There is NO way to separate elements from that.

"You can't unmix the flour or the sugar from a cake once its baked."

 

[T J]

So you are saying I need a magic wand or the Enterprise-D computer system, gottcha.

Thanks, I'll look into Reaper, maybe I'll learn something.

 

[M'Sharak]

So you are saying I need a magic wand or the Enterprise-D computer system, gottcha.

Or whatever black box the CSI guys use, yeah.

Now, if you had the multi-track master recording, then isolating and extracting certain portions is quite easy. However, once those have been mixed down into a single monaural track or pair of stereo tracks, then that single or double track containing everything is what you have, and any attempt to extract part of it from the mix (or to extract the music and leave behind the reader's spoken words) is not going to yield satisfactory results.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Your only hope is if the vocals are in the "center" channel and the music isn't. Most decent audio editors have a feature called "vocal cut" or "remove vocals" which strips out the center channel and leaves the music and, usually, a very faint remnant of the original vocals.

 

[Outpost4]

The essence of a program like this is you reverse the phase on one of the two channels and then mix them together in mono. The vocal, which was mono originally, is cancelled out. You have to play with the volume of the one channel so that they are exactly equal but it can work. Unfortunately, anything that was mono initially is cancelled out, not just the vocal. Since bass is mostly mixed to the center in recordings, the result is often music with no bass. You can use an equalizer to help overcome this but that only gets you so far.

So in a nutshell, OP, you are out of luck. Robert Maxwell's solution is the only quick one but it is also down and dirty.

 

[TerriO]

Your only hope is if the vocals are in the "center" channel and the music isn't. Most decent audio editors have a feature called "vocal cut" or "remove vocals" which strips out the center channel and leaves the music and, usually, a very faint remnant of the original vocals.

Whoever made the sugar and flour from cake reference is absolutely right.

Once the channels are mixed and a stereo output is generated, unless you have the original multi-channel master, it's damned near impossible to strip out specific channels from the stereo mix.

This is why I kept all of my multi-channel mixes from my days as a theatrical sound designer.

 

[Squiggy]

I love center-channel extraction.

A really good track to try this on is The Spice Girls '2 Become 1" (don't ask). Cool Edit's default setting removes/keeps about 90% of the vocal depending on what you want to play with.

Pretty much all the poppy stuff from the late 90s was mixed this way. Fiona Apple's Criminal, Britney Spears...etc.

It should be noted, however...that you can't eliminate 100% of the vocals in any of these songs. There's always going to be audio artifacts in what's left...24 and CSI be damned.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Yep. I would trust the words of the audio engineer. And dammit, I've tried to remove vocals... it never completely works.

 

[T J]

So... no flying cars, no Moon base, no men on Mars, no wide spread clean fuel infrastructure, and no magic-audio-do-whatever-I-want-machine?! Other than the vaccine for polio is there any difference between me, a 21st century man, and some poor slob in the 1th century?!

 

[judexavier]

www.reaper.fm

But I suspect you're really asking for a tool to magically (and automatically) suck the background music out of the audio file without the vocal.

Aint. Gonna. Happen. (except in movies and TV)

In a stereo .wav you have a squiggly waveform for the right channel and a squiggly waveform for the left channel. There is NO way to separate elements from that.

"You can't unmix the flour or the sugar from a cake once its baked."

JustAFriend, just wanted to say Thank You SO much for that link! I've been having soooo much fun with Reaper, VSTi's, etc. Next purchase actually. Haven't had this much music fun since...well, a long time.

I'm enjoying this so much I may forget to got to the theater in May...

 

[JustAFriend]

It is an incredible value.... easily equal to programs costing hundreds more.

By the way, Reaper was coded by the same guy that developed the WinAmp music player.

The forum on the Reaper site is one of the best on the musician's web and Justin puts out more updates/upgrades to Reaper than any other program I've ever seen.

If I ever do anything that makes any money I wont hesitate to give him the commercial license fee....

 

[deaf one]

I love center-channel extraction.

A really good track to try this on is The Spice Girls '2 Become 1" (don't ask). Cool Edit's default setting removes/keeps about 90% of the vocal depending on what you want to play with.

Pretty much all the poppy stuff from the late 90s was mixed this way. Fiona Apple's Criminal, Britney Spears...etc.

It should be noted, however...that you can't eliminate 100% of the vocals in any of these songs. There's always going to be audio artifacts in what's left...24 and CSI be damned.

 

[think]

yeah reaper I have I payed like 60 or 80 dollars to unlock it they want me to pay like 60 dollars to upgrade to the version 6=== I bought the version 3, upgrade to 4 and 5 for free but 6 upgrade is money again .. i just use five it does what I need and it need not be fixed or developed at all --- and yet.I still use audacity more - and I know reaper does the audacity tasks and a lot more this is why one pays for it but this task is easy with the free audacity program hands down works better for mixing and recording and ... filter lots of filters effects.. yeah with reaper I use the midi controls .. but with audacity it does all my audio file work.. all of it. because of the ease and the free program and mmmmmm it is made to do that.

https://www.audacityteam.org/download/

I wonder why no one said audacity yet it is the best IMO --

 

[Santaman]

Because this thread is from 2009 probably..

 

[think]

I used audacity in 2009 i used audacity even before that but yeah maybe.. was not as popular back then .. still it was the best.. ---