There is no way of completely removing the vocals -- unless the vocal is on one channel and the rest of the music are on the other ones, then you can remove that channel. However, the gold wave reduce vocals isn't so relyable. It could remove vocals, sometimes almost entirely, but it will almost always leave some trace of the vocal behind, I'm afraid. The only fail-safe ways of making an orchestral music is if you have the individual files that composed the music (drums, guitars, pianoes etc all not mixed), then you can just mix all the drums and stuff without the vocal. Or perhaps studioes have professional devices that will remove the vocals completely. In short, I don't think it is possible to remove the vocals entirely with GoldWave

I agree with kenzon about this, and if the sound is stereo it just makes it mono.

hey, how about adobe audition?

Hi all,

Vocal removing plugins or effects essentially assume that your vocal is going to be directly in the center of the stereo field. While this is logical, you must keep in mind that there may also be instruments in this channel as well. Also, keep in mind that some songs place harmonies elsewhere in the stereo field, leaving a reduced lead vocal but leaving the harmonies with the instrumental. The only efficient way of removing a vocal or an instrumental is, to find the original vocal/instrumental, and invert that with the original track. In Goldwave, to do this, first you must click invert in the effects menuu on either track. You must not do both tracks. Next, copy the first track. Then, go to the other track, press control+m, and then line the two up by adjusting the mix time in the edit box. Eventually, once you get it right, the vocal/instrumental will cancel itself out of the track. Note, this may leave artifacts, and it sometimes is impossible to entirely align the tracks due to timing differences or pitch differences. In this case, sadly, there is no other way. There might be software out there that can do it, but I've never heard of it.

Adobe Audition actually does quite a good job if you use the center channel extractor, which among other things gives you choices on how much of the vocals you want to remove, what the frequency range is, etc. It's actually the best I've seen so far, and as others have said, it's almost impossible to perfectly remove vocals and leave the instrumentals. but Adobe Audition is probably the closest you'll get.

Yeah, what I really recommend is, you could try adobe audition.