Unnaturally Long Attention Span

Vocals Remover for Windows Media Player

Last week, I was looking for some software to remove the voice tracks from mp3s. There are plenty of independent audio editing programs that can filter out vocals from sound files, but I didn’t want to modify my mp3s or keep a whole ‘nother voice-stripped version of my music library. What I really wanted was just a minimal plugin for my Windows Media Player that I could enable to turn off vocals. There didn’t seem to be anything out there freely available.

So, I started hacking my own plugin, and I’m releasing it here for free download in case it could be useful for others. (Hi, Google!)

Vocals Remover is an Audio DSP plugin for Windows Media Player that cancels out the voice track in real-time so that you can sing along. It supports all major file formats (including video) and lets you adjust the amount of voice removal and gain compensation. While the plugin works pretty reliably, it can get confused on songs where the foreground singer and instrumentals are hard to tell apart.  So, don’t expect it to work well on your experimental house mix or just about anything by T-Pain.

Download
Vocals Remover for  Windows Media Player.msi (44 KB)
Requirements: WMP 11 or greater

To install, simply run the downloaded package and uninstall works in the usual way via Windows control panel.

To enable or disable, just see whether the plugin is selected in WMP.  In WMP12, this is found by right-click -> Tools -> Plugins.  There is also a properties panel in Tools > Options >Plug-ins > Audio DSP -> Properties button, where you can customize the amount of the effect to apply.  A 0.0 means the effect is effectively off and a 1.0 means the maximum amount of voice cancellation is applied.

A short demo:

The above video also features the highly recommended lyrics plugin, which in combination with the Vocals Remover, turns your PC into a hacktastic DIY karaoke box!