oopsing with audacity

I'm trying to hear some well known records we know and love
in a different sort of mix

apparently there is a phasing technique called oopsing

I use a mixer called Audacity on my laptop

can someone explain how to use this technique

what buttons do I push!



Is this the right um part of the forum for this post ?

so anyone who can help!

 

This should probably be/will be moved to the technical forum. Audacity - Effect > Vocal Remover...

 

I wish!

There is no such button

what else would it be called

 

here's some fun songs to oops if you're into these bands

purple haze and foxey lady and manic depression

beginnings by chicago

birthday and obladi oblada by beatles

freewill by rush

 

What

What I mean is how do you oops something

I want to get a vocal louder not eliminate it

 

This only works on stereo tracks, remember. OOPS* a mono track and you get silence (and possibly MP3 warble).

1) Import your stereo track.
2) Separate into Left and Right mono tracks. [Split Stereo Track command, accessible by clicking the track's name, to the right of the X on the track]
3) Take a track and select it all.
4) Look for a command called "Invert"**, in the Effect menu. Use it. There is no dialog box that opens.
5) IMPORTANT: make each track a mono track [Open the track's menu, the same place you found the Split Stereo Track command, and select Mono for both tracks you have open, the single-channel Left and the single-channel Right.] This is the most important part, since the karaoke trick is based on phase cancellation.
6) Listen! If you want to bring it back out of Audacity, bring the gains of both channels down - -3 or -6 dB are good numbers, and then export both tracks like you would anything else.

*OOPS = Out Of Phase Stereo, aka the "karaoke trick"

**What this command does is flip the phase of the waveform, essentially turning the waveform upside down; peaks become troughs and vice versa. This, when combined with the opposite channel, will effectively hide anything panned squarely in the center of the mix.

The reason for this, in case somebody didn't know, is that stereo is created through sending a certain percentage of a signal to either speaker - if a sound is 100% left, it will be heard only in the left speaker, for instance. Sounds that appear to originate in the center are actually equal volume in both channels. Flipping the phase of one channel and combining it with the other are essentially performing this equation:

1 + -1 = 0

and thus the "center" signal is removed. There is no guarantee that the sound in question (usually vocals) will be totally removed, however, because stereo reverb is often used to give an instrument or vocal track more depth in the mix, and the reverberated signal is left over. Generally, too, the bass will be missing from the OOPS mix, (which, by the way, is in mono) since bass is generally panned to the center in most recordings.

There is no "Vocal Remover" effect in my copy of Audacity.

Ah, why didn't you say so?

The purpose of OOPS in this case is to omit sounds that appear in the phantom center. Outside of Adobe Audition's "Center Channel Extractor" plugin, there is no way to perform the opposite effect.

 

oopsing means to obtain a single mono signal that is the difference between the left and right channel.

you can do this by hardwiring your speakers out of phase, or with software, or the old school method of barely unplugging your headphones out of your sony walkman

it doesn't necessarily do anything to the vocals

the way it works, is that the further something is panned hard left or right, the louder it will be in the OOPS signal. if something is panned dead center, it will dissapear

 

OOPS stands for Out Of Phase Stereo, and it involves inverting the phase on one channel. It usually makes vocals disappear, not get louder. Since the vocals on most records are placed in the middle of the stereo image, they're the same level on both sides, which means they'll be canceled out when you invert phase on one channel.

OOPSing also makes most songs sound much tinnier and thinner than usual, since the bass and a lot of the drums go too.

That said, it's fun to do, and it enables you to hear things that are usually buried under the vocals in the mix. In the Beatles' Revolution 1 for example, you can clearly hear George Martin count "1, 2, 3, 4" before the horns come in.

I don't know specifically how to do it in Audacity, but essentially what you need to do is invert the phase of one of the tracks (left or right, it doesn't matter), then re-combine the left and right into a mono file.

 

All that said, the other day in my Audio class we were discussing mastering. There, we talked about a way mastering engineers use to change the volume of particular sounds in a mix when they only have a stereo channel to work with.

Supposedly, by combining the left and right channels in phase, and also combining the left and right channels with one out of phase (the karaoke trick), one can get two separate channels [M, or L+R; and S, or L-R] with which to turn up (or otherwise alter) things in the middle, and turn down (or otherwise alter) things on the sides.

Then the stereo track can be recreated by making the left channel the mid and the side combined in phase, and making the right channel the mid and the side combined with the side out of phase.

Is that really commonly used by mastering engineers, and furthermore, does it even work?

 

Is that really true, that Adobe Audition is the ONLY way to extract a vocal? Nothing for Pro Tools? Not even a free plug in somewhere out there?

 

THis is getting complicated!

Yes I have two vocals doing a duet down the middle and I want to make one of the vocals louder or the other one softer

I dont know how to get this adobe stuff going

so I hope there is some way to do it with audacity!

the two vocals are in different EQ ranges so I can have some effect with that to a point but it ruins the mix too

Uh if I could get the one vocal up even three or four dbs compared to the other vocal it would be great

if you have two vocals mixed at about the same level how can you
the one a few dbs louder

I have to try some of the things that were explained a few messages ago back later

 

Do an OOPS on the Beatles song "Birthday". It's pretty much vocals and handclaps only since all the music was mixed center and the vocals were split left and right. Pretty cool!

 

Quote:
Originally Posted by BeatleJWOL
Outside of Adobe Audition's "Center Channel Extractor" plugin, there is no way to perform the opposite effect.

That's not true. There may not be an automatic plug-in that's been made for any other program, but that doesn't mean you can't do it manually on most audio software...

 

You confused me with your first post, becasue the term OOPS ("vocal remover", "karaoke filter") is a totally different concept from what you seem to want ("center-channel extraction")...

 

Download the newest Audacity, 1.3.6 beta. Especially if you use Windows Vista (it's more stable than any older version). But, even if you use XP or Mac, you will find more features (like the "vocal remover"). I was wrong about the location before. It goes Effect > Utility > Vocal Remover...

 

Wait. So your saying that both vocals are only in the center, and that neither can be found in the far left or right channels?

 

Yes Mike

Two lead vocals in Harmony are down the middle doing a duet

I want to get one vocal more level

the low one is probaly around three kilohertz I would guess the high one is around eight

but eq doesnt seem to work

I want to extract a lead vocal so I can make it louder!

or get rid of the high part

 

Unfortunately, unless at least one of those two vocals are audible in the extreme right or left channels of the stereo field, then you've gone about as far as possible...

 

...and it's still not perfect, and unless ther vocal is perfectly centered in the middle, you will get "shadows of it, and anything else in the center. Sometimes you can get lucky with the right recording, but otherwise, it is impossible to remove vocals.

To this day, this question is asked on every audio forum, every day, all the time. I moderate one, and it's exassperating!

 

TELL ME

Is there any way to make a centered lead vocal louder in the mix

could someone tell me how!

 

If it's a stereo track, fold it into mono. It will automatically raise the center channel (usually vocals) an additional 3 db's...

 

It's official...Grant puts the "a--" in "exassperating"!

 

Jeff tell them what song you're talking about. It's possible the CD remix and original LP mix are different and you may still be able to boost a vocal or remove most of the other using Audacity. Ron

 

Something new for me to try in Audacity. As I am teaching myself how to use it.