How-to guide
How to remove vocals in Audacity vs VocalSplit
Audacity is free and has a Vocal Reduction and Isolation effect, but it is based on a decades-old stereo trick that barely works on modern mixes. VocalSplit is a neural separator. Both exist. One of them is substantially better at the actual job.
Audacity's method inverts one stereo channel and subtracts it from the other. This only works when the vocal is perfectly centered in a stereo mix — and it destroys anything else that is centered (kick, snare, bass, many lead synths).
Step-by-step
- Audacity method — Import the song. File then Import then Audio, then pick your track. Audacity needs a stereo file to do anything useful with this effect.
- Audacity method — Apply Vocal Reduction and Isolation. Effect then Vocal Reduction and Isolation then Isolate Center. Preview the result — on most modern mixes you will hear a hollow, gutted instrumental with artefacts.
- VocalSplit method — Upload the song. Go to vocalsplit.io, drop the file onto the upload area. Any format up to 100 MB.
- VocalSplit method — Pay and wait. $0.99 per split. About 15 seconds of processing.
- Compare the two outputs. On any modern pop, rock, hip-hop or EDM track, the VocalSplit output has dramatically less bleed, artefacts and bass loss than the Audacity version.
Tips for better results
- Audacity's trick still works OK on very old stereo mixes with vocals hard-centered and instruments panned wide.
- VocalSplit is cheap to try, so run both on the same song once to hear the difference yourself.
- For Audacity fans: there are third-party plugins wrapping Spleeter, but installation is finicky and they still lag neural services on quality.
Try VocalSplit free
Upload a song and get clean vocals and instrumental stems in under 15 seconds. First split is $0.99.
Split a song