Topic: Ultimate Vocal Remover 5

[goodcooker]

I didn't see a thread about this free program though it has popped up in discussions about eliminating crowd noise.

I had a few significant hiccups recording 9 bands in one night on two stages simultaneously and this program has saved my bacon on a few of these.

Quick impressions after using it a couple of times -
1) It's not a silver bullet solution for crowd noise but it does help
2) it works for decreasing but not eliminating chatter over instrumental music
3) it's resource intense - neither of my computers that I use for music have a recognized Nvidia GPU which can cut processing time way down. Without a compatible Nvidia GPU you must rely on CPU processing which is pretty slow - depending on how you utilize it and how big your files are

Hurdle #1 - I was given a monitor feed and stage access for mics at a gig with 4 bands playing back to back. I wasn't able to monitor well set up right next to the stage left stacks so I didn't realize until afterwards that my feed sounded good except for a serious lack of MAIN VOCAL. I was disappointed to say the least. So I tried running the monitor mix tracks through UV5 song by song and then mixing the isolated vocal track back into the initial mix of the monitor feed and my stage lip mics. It works remarkably well. It's not perfect but it's certainly better than it was.

Hurdle #2 - at the same time I was recording in another room that had 5 bands overlapping slightly with the bands on the main stage. It's a little room maybe 25x40 ft and it gets packed. I ended up running my AKG C522 stereo mic > Oade DR100 rig in the back of the room since that was the only way I could get to it without a fight and also keep it from getting walked on. So the tight packed crowd was loud AF with the chatter especially during the Robert Walter, Reed Mathis, Simon Lott, Will Bernard set that I was the most excited about. I ran the 30 second sample mode on the file and I was very impressed with the improvement. Not perfect but for sure a big difference. If you listen to the isolated vocal track (which is the noise I'm trying to remove here - instrumental band) you can hear a little of the Hammond organ but not a lot.

There's a lot of options and and big community of users of this open source free tool. I will probably use this frequently going forward.

[AbbyTaper]

I haven't used it to eliminate crowd noise, but I have used it to split the file into stems.  I've also tried 3 other programs to split stems.  All of them are slow as hell, unfortunately.  I also don't have a recognized GPU.

[fanofjam]

Interesting post.  I might pick up the software and run it on some old recordings. 

I thought of two venues while reading this.  Melkweg in Amsterdam is really cool...it has two parallel rooms connected by a hallway.  I've only been there once and the night I went only one band played, but I popped my head into the other room and that room looked about the same size as the one I was in.  Would be fun to see two headliners on the same night there. 

The second is where they hold the all-night Bayou Rendezvous.  Given your description of the size of the second room, sounds like that's where you were.  I agree that second room is pretty tough to record.  When I recorded the Redezvous I think in 2017, I set my stand up hard against the right wall and surprisingly it survived.  The first set was a circus but by morning not many people were left and the recordings turned out pretty good.

[aaronji]

^ I love the Melkweg. Great venue. In my opinion, it is Amsterdam's finest. There are three halls, the Max (capacity of 1250), the OZ ("oude zaal" or old hall, capacity 650) and Upstairs (capacity 250). Plus a movie theater and an exhibition space. I have recorded in all three, but, hands down, the OZ is the best. Great sound and taping from the soundboard enclosure puts you quite close to the stage. In addition, the staff is really friendly and helpful and have let me do some things that few venues would allow... 

[EmRR]

Here to report several errors I've seen. 

MDX23C-8KFFT-InstVoc_HQ (vocal/instrumental) - have tried it as part of an ensemble split twice now, produced the same error both times - one file completely blank, the other having sound on the L channel only for about half the length, then stereo silence.

htdemucs - 4 channel split.  On a source with only occasional bass that could be extracted, the file was shorter than the rest, and appears to have skipped random blocks of silence here and there.  Started to cut up the hour and a half file to align it and realized I would be making a dozen cuts.  Re-ran it, got a good result. 

It would be great if it added sample rate and channel options, currently exports everything at 44K1 stereo.   Much of what I do is mono 48K. so I have to convert the rate and split stereo back to mono after processing.

[robgronotte]

I have had the problem you mention with incomplete or blank files a few times, and also a few times I have had the program just stop partially into the process. But each time it worked fine on the second try.