Vocal Remover – 2nd Sense

Though named Vocal Remover, the plugin is used to remove or extract sound in a specified direction span from a stereo sound.

If you use it to extract the center vocal sound, it becomes the center vocal extractor. If you use it to remove the guitar sound on the left, it becomes a side guitar remover.

The Vocal Remover from 2nd Sense is a plug-in designed to extract or remove audio from the left, center, or right channel of a stereo mix. Available for download, you can use it to extract a vocal from a full song, or conversely, to remove the vocal from that song and still be left with a listenable product once the vocal is gone. As such, it is useful for crafting at-home Karaoke tracks, which is a noble enterprise indeed.

Many other processes—such as flipping the polarity of one channel and summing to mono—yield results that, though effective, leave something to be desired sonically in the ultimate result. On the other hand, the Vocal Remover produces a less problematic outcome when isolating parts of the stereo field. Though the product has been bestowed the name of Vocal Remover, you can use it to remove/extract any sound source in the offending/desirable part of the soundscape; it’s as apt for removing a guitar on the right channel as it is for a vocal located in the center.

The plug-in allows you to control the width of the field you’re processing, as well as the direction and frequency cutoffs, both low and high. In addition, you can select between removing the target audio or extracting it. Compatible with Windows and Mac platforms, the Mixing Analyzer works in VST 2, AU, and AAX formats.