Comparison with other products

[MikeP]

Comparisons
I have compared the results I was able to achieve with the Thompson VE-3, DART, Soundforge, NERO and both versions of Vogone, plus the "live" vocal elimination function on my Sony DVD player and JVC Karaoke machine. It's probably fair to say that none of them will totally eliminate a centre-panned lead vocal without severely affecting the overall sound, however it is possible to achieve "useful" results - depends on what u are trying to achieve. Certainly I can produce a result that is quite acceptable for home use - I can't imagine using them for any sort of professional use and I believe that would raise the touchy subject of copyright (although Mr Thompson doesn't seem to think so).

To elaborate on the results of all my comparisons would be too long and not that relevant. Suffice to say that Vogone 2 is very simple and user-friendly compared with some of the methods & programs I have used. I have achieved better results but had to chop the sound track up into 20+ bits (seperating those parts of the song that did not have any vocals & therefore did not require any vocal elimination filtering from the parts that did require this filter). This sort of activity can take hours/days/weeks and the result then requires further processing to "smooth out" the different bits of the song!

Conclusion
Vogone 2 can produce very good results very quickly on centre panned (the usual) stereo tracks which have originally been recorded in a (recording) studio. When one considers all the facts (including how much it would cost to produce a "band track" in a recording studio with the original artists exact arrangement/accompaniment), I think the results are truly quite amazing. The most difficult thing to retain is the bass & drums (because they are always panned to the centre the same as the lead vocal). Vogone 2 manages to do this as well as anything else - perhaps better.

This was originally posted while I was Beta Testing Vogone 2.007 before the final version 2.014 polished release.

Mike Pyne
Director of Music
Melbourne
Australia