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Comment by xtagon | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if this can segregate vocals from instrumentals in a mix? That would be great for mashups.

Incidentally, due to the way a lot of stereo tracks are mixed, it's often possible to mostly remove the vocal track from a song. I'm more curious if this algorithm could perform the reverse task - playing the vocals only. My intuition is that the results would be poor because of the wide human vocal range and the fact that words need to be discernible, not just notes. But I would love to be proven wrong here.

If you can remove the vocals from a piece, you can then subtract that from the original to get just the vocals.

Well that's not quite true. The point is, I believe, that vocals are generally put right in the center of the sound-stage, so they play equally in the left and right channels. Thus right - left is most of the rest of the song, but the vocals cancelled each other out.

However, the right - left mix isn't exactly the song minus the vocals, it's an odd off-version, so subtracting that from the original song will leave mostly the vocals but with artifacts from the difference between the song truly without vocals and the right - left mix's interpretation thereof

Yes, certainly. My point is that if you have "mostly no vocals" you can subtract that from the left + right mix to get "mostly the vocals". It won't be exactly right, sure.

Fair enough!

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