>Keeping only lead vocals in a song (backing vocals extractor)
Sometimes the same model might work for lead, sometimes for back vocals depending on a song.
Sometimes extracting vocals with a good model can degrade the quality, experiment both ways but “if they are really quiet in the mix, sometimes they first need to be extracted to come out clear, but lead vocals usually aren't that way… and you can easily confuse the model by extracting them first” - rainboomdash
- Anvuew’s Karaoke BS-Roformer model | metrics | MSST | MVSEP | Colab
(stems: Lead vocals/backing with instrumental)
“this is the best for extracting lead vocals, currently” - rainboomdash
“extracts lead vocals a bit better than karaoke becruily frazer, and in some parts, the lead vocals from karaoke anvuew still sound brighter compared to karaoke becruily frazer, which sounds a bit more compressed. oh, and for some reason, the becruily frazer model doesn’t detect vocals with radio effects, while anvuew’s model handles them just fine” - neoculture
“lead vocals leak into instrumental (...) Mel Becruily and Frazer’s BS don’t have this problem”
In that case, maybe “isolate the acapella first in almost all cases of using a karaoke model” or use the model below instead.
- Ensemble of becruily frazer karaoke + anvuew karaoke (Max Spec) -
to get the backing vocals, use instrumental only in UVR to get only them - neoculture
If one model in the ensemble does a bad job, it will spoil the result, so be aware.
- (x-minus/uvronline) Lead and Backing vocal separator (in “Extract Backing vocals>Mel-Roformer Lead/Back)
It uses big beta 5e model as preprocessor for becruily Mel Karaoke model
“In fact, the big beta 5e Deux model is run after becruily Mel Karaoke” - Aufr33, Gabox (so you don’t need the additional step to use this separator), plus it also allows controlling option for lead vocal panning like for BVE v2 (It’s to “to "tell" the AI where the main vocals are located (how they are mixed).”. “Doesn't even need Lead vocal panning a lot of the time, [the] ability to recognize what is LV and what is BV [is] impressive” - dca).
“The new separator is available in the free version, however, due to its resource intensity, only the first minute of the song will be processed.” if you don’t have a premium.
The difference from using single becruily Kar model is that, here, “you get the third track, backing vocals.”.
- Mel-Roformer small_karaoke_gaboxauf by Gabox and Aufr33 | yaml | Colab | Metrics.
For RTX 5000 patch and torch._dynamo error, edit “use_torch_checkpoint: True” to False (or delete the line).
“it sounds much more fuller than other karaoke models I use [anvuew bs roformer, bs karaoke gabox, and becruily karaoke] and clears out bg vocal much more accurately” - baptizedinfear
“great! got to hear vocals I could not hear before.” - makesomenoiseyuh
“it's not great with duets btw” - Gabox
Lowering chunk_size to 352800 makes it muddier, but less noise, “maybe in between would be nice” - rainboomdash
- Mel-Roformer Karaoke by becruily model file | Colab | MVSEP | x-minus
“It's a dual model, trained for both vocals and instrumental. It sounds fuller + understands better what is lead and background vocal
- Gabox Mel KaraokeGabox model (uses Aufr’s config) | Colab
“The lead vocals are good and clean!
While the backing tracks are lossy for this model, [it still] provide[s] great convenient for those who need LdV”
“The model doesn't keep the backing vocals below the main vocals, sometimes the backing vocals will be lost even though there are backing vocals there.”
- Newer Gabox experimental Karaoke model (June 2025). It’s one stem target so keep extract_instrumental enabled for the rest stem.
“really hard to tell the difference between this and becruily's karaoke model” minus the latter has more target stems.
- BVE v2 model on x-minus.pro/uvronline.app for premium users | model (“4band_v4_ms_fullband” stock config) by Aufr33
Place the model file in Ultimate Vocal Remover\models\VR_Models and config file in lib_v5\vr_network\modelparams. Then pick “4band_v4_ms_fullband.json” and BV when asked to recognize the model (it has the same checksum as in modelparams folder if it’s there already). Also, I think it's not a VR 5.1 model.
“Note that this model should be used with a rebalanced mix.
The recommended music level is no more than 25% or -12 dB.
If you use this model in your project, please credit me.”
(it's v1 version is also added in UVR’s “Download More Models”, but also without the stereo width feature which can fix some issues when BVs are confused with other vocals).
On x-minus “When you select stereo, it applies a stereo narrower before AI processing.”
(sometimes it might work for lead, sometimes for back vocals)
It used to be one of the best models so far. On x-minus it used voc_ft for all vocals as a preprocessor already.
"Seems to begin a phrase with a bit of confusion between lead and backing, but then kicks in with better separation later in the phrase."
“If something struggles to separate on bve v2 I change the lv panning option to either 50 or 80% [stereo or center], and it separates it amazingly.
It even allows me to separate backing backing vocals from backing vocals”
"BVE sounds good for now but being an (U)VR model the vocals are soft (it doesn’t extract hard sounds like K, T, S etc. very well)"
- For UVR BVE v2 LV bleed in Song without LV - download the BV track and add it to inst v1e model result - no vocal bleed/residues (introC).
- MVSep MelBand Karaoke (lead/back vocals) SCNet XL IHF by becruily (SDR: 9.53)
“Could be more useful for BVE than karaoke [models].” - becruily
- MVSep BS-Roformer Lead Vocal model from “MVSep Mega 53 Stems” all-in-one model or single models (less VRAM-hungry) - 1.27GB | splifft | MVSepless HF / HF CPU / Colab / newer (you can pick which stems you want there, but it’s in Russian, and HF doesn’t support auto-translate, but Colab might)
The model can be muddy, it's small. It was further trained on MVSep in the all-in-one model and returns only present stems.
- Solo Voice model model by Darck Knight (necromunt)
https://huggingface.co/Lambda001/BandSplitPolarFormers/blob/main/BS-PF-SV_V2.ckpt | yaml
V2 “should [have] more fullness, and also have an improved aura-MRSTFT.”
“My model is Solo Voice, NOT KARAOKE! (...) The key difference: a karaoke & BVE models answers "who's the lead at this moment?" - Solo Voice answers "which one is THE voice?" and extracts that single vocalist from all the rest
I think this is similar to how the MBRoFo Duet model works.
The goal of my model is to briefly leave 1 voice in the SOLO.
No doubles, harmonics, backing tracks, or anything else.
Even if it's 1 track just duplicated with micro-tone shifts”
- gilliaan_bsroformer_deeffect_v1beta | yaml | Colab | MVSEP
“"work in progress" model, it's a proof of concept. (finetune of becruily's karaoke model shoutout to him, BS Roformer)
It separates lead vocal from BGVs, it acts as a De-echo/De-reverb/De-chorus/De-double, cleans out the lead. Made specifically for RVC training, it gives you the raw dry lead vocals of a mix basically. Works on full mixes too, but isolated vocals give better results.” - gilliaan
As preprocessor “My pick would be one of the Gabox models since they are usually very clean, and there are many fullness levels to choose from." - musicalman
Also, “separate the instrumentals first with a better model since the deeffect model could leave some synths, trumpets, etc.” - makidanyee
E.g. phantom center then gabox flowers v10 with phase fix” - Izzy/bitterkite
“If you want to separate layers of BGVs or remove effects from BGVs putting it straight in will do nothing and put all of it in FX stem because that's what it was trained on but separating the channels left and right makes it suddenly work.
it's actually amazing” - isling
"This model is really good for Adlib seperation
Successfully removes Travis scott adlibs and adlibs from Nine Vicious and other underground rappers" - squiddagod
- Mel-Roformer Karaoke (by aufr33 & viperx) on x-minus.pro / uvronline.app / mvsep
model file (UVR instruction) - online version above might work better
(may extract more than BVE V2), if "extract directly from mixture" on MVSEP doesn’t detect the BVs (x-minus behavior for this model), the chances are "extract from vocals part" on MVSEP (which uses BS-Roformer 2024.08 for it) will detect more BVs (although with possible cross bleed between lead/back in inst+bv)
- Gabox Mel KaraokeGabox model (uses Aufr’s config) | Colab
“The lead vocals are good and clean!
While the backing tracks are lossy for this model, [it still] provide[s] great convenient for those who need LdV”
“The model doesn't keep the backing vocals below the main vocals, sometimes the backing vocals will be lost even though there are backing vocals there.”
- Gabox Mel KaraokeGabox model (uses Aufr’s config) | Colab
“The lead vocals are good and clean!
While the backing tracks are lossy for this model, [it still] provide[s] great convenient for those who need LdV”
“The model doesn't keep the backing vocals below the main vocals, sometimes the backing vocals will be lost even though there are backing vocals there.”
- anvuew dereverb Mel-Roformer model v2 (“on some songs I tried it worked better than karaoke models”) not for duets, it debleeds too, “cleaner backing vocals [than the below], can sometimes mistake main vocals/delay for backing vocals more often than [the below])”
- karokee_4band_v2_sn a.k.a. UVR-MDX NET Karaoke 2 (MVSEP [MDX B (Karaoke)] / Colab / UVR5 GUI / x-minus.pro) - “best for keeping lead vocal detail” on its own, “cleaner main vocals, has significantly less bleeding than the MVSep counterpart”, removes backing vocals from a track, but when we use min_mag_k it can return similar results to:
- Demix Pro (paid, “keeps more backing vocals [than Karaoke 2] (and somehow the lead vocals are also better most of the time, with fuller sound”
“Demix is better for keeping background vocals yes, but for the lead ones they tend to sound weaker (the spectrum isn’t as full and has more holes than karaoke 2, but this isn’t always a bad thing because the lead vocals themselves are cleaner, the mdx karaoke 2 might produce fuller lead vocals, but you will most certainly have some background vocals left too”)
- Fusion model of Gabox Karaoke and Aufr33/viperx model on MVSEP
(tend to confuse BV/LV more than single models)
- Gonzaluigi Karaoke fusion models (standard | aggresive | yaml) -
also confuses BV/LV more
- viperx/Play da Segunda model not available anywhere for public inference - has a bigger SDR than MVSEP Karaoke BS-Roformer 124 bands (probably you can buy it by contacting him on his YT channel, or request separation there), but the difference is the biggest in SDR only for lead vocals.
Older models
- MDX B Karaoke on mvsep.com (exclusive) - good, but as an alternative you could use MDX Karaoke 2 in UVR 5 (they are different)
“I personally wouldn't recommend 5/6_hp karaoke, except for using 5_hp karaoke as a last resort, you could also use the x minus bve model in uvr which sometimes is good with lead vocals”
- UVR-BVE-4B_SN-44100-1
- Center extraction model
- Melodyne guide
- RipX
(doesn’t work for everyone)
- MDX-UVR Inst HQ_3 - new, best in removing background vocals from a song (e.g. from Kim Vocal 2)
Or consecutive models processing:
- Vocals (good vocal stem from e.g. voc_ft or 1296 or MDX23C single models or ensembles of MDX23C / MDX23 2.2 / UVR top/near top SDR / Ensemble of only vocal models: Kim 1, 2, voc_ft, MDX23C_D1581, eventually with demucs_ft
>The vocal result separated with->
Karaoke model -> Lead_Voc & Backing_Voc
(+ experimentally split stereo channels and separate them on their own, then join channels back)
“Karaoke 2 really won't pick up any chorus lead vocals EXCEPT for ad-libs
6-HP will pick up the melody, although it's usually muffled as hell”
“Q: is mdx karaoke 2 still the best for lead and back vocals' separation?
A: I'm finding it's the best for "fullness" but 6-HP picks up chorus melody while K2 only usually picks up ad-libs
I personally like mixing K2, 6-HP (and sometimes 5-HP if 6-HP sounds very thin) together
also, let's say a verse has back vocals that are just the melody behind the lead vocal (instead of harmonies) for a doubling effect, sometimes K2 will still pick up both the lead and double.”
AG89 avg ensemble:
UVR-5-1_4band_v4_ms_fullband_BVE_V2,
Karaoke_GaboxV2,
mel-band_karaoke_fusion_standard
Shouted vocals or chants
- DeEffect (e.g. on Mvsep or Colab)
- one of the legacy UVR Kar 2 models to do centre extraction (e.g. on UVR online) on other half of the audio when the above failed "it worked better when I didnt pan it in the centre, removing SOME of the "ah's" - faerieofthecrypt