Using the powerful online Voice Cleaner tool with Lalal.ai, you can remove background audio from any voice memo or video to get clear, crisp vocals free of other noise. It’s a great way to recover professional sounding audio out of a botched recording. The vocal and instrumental features can also help you isolate or separate a variety of instruments from a song to use in resampling or editing.
Here’s how it works.
Remove background audio with Lalal.ai
Image: lalal.ai
First, you need to create an account on Lalal.ai. It’s easy because it supports signing in with your existing Apple, Google or Facebook account in addition to email. You can choose to use the web app or download the desktop app for macOS, which I recommend. Download the app here, then drag the app into your Applications folder.
Screenshot: D. Griffin Jones/Cult of Mac
Removing the background audio from a file is incredibly easy. Just hit the + icon in the upper right and you’ll see all the options for things you can separate:
- Vocal tracks from all the instrumental parts
- Drums
- Bass
- Voice from any background noise
- Acoustic guitar
- Electric guitar
- Piano
- Synthesizers
- Stringed instruments
- Wind instruments
After you’ve made a selection, just drag your target audio file into the window. It’ll instantly upload the file and process in the cloud. You’ll get back two tracks: one with isolated vocals (or whichever instrument you picked) and another track with everything else.
Screenshot: D. Griffin Jones/Cult of Mac
As soon as it’s ready, you’ll get a quick one-minute preview of the audio. You can preview both versions of the track by hitting the play button. If you’re satisfied, click Process the Entire File to get the full version. Only processing entire files count towards your balance; you can try a bunch of short previews for free.
Processing an entire file automatically downloads the tracks to your computer in /Downloads/Lalal.ai/ so your files stay organized — it’s a nice touch. Just click the folder icon to open it in the Finder. It generally outputs in the same format as you input, for ease of use.
A great way to clean up or remove background audio
Screenshot: D. Griffin Jones/Cult of Mac
Lalal.ai supports all kinds of audio and video formats, so it has you covered no matter what kind of project you’re working on: avi, mkv, wmv, mp4, m4v, flv, 3gp, mpg, mpeg, webm, ts, m2ts, dv, mov, qt, divx, mp3, m4a, wma, off, wav, flac, ape, aac and ac3. Some of these I haven’t even heard of before!
I tested the app on a bunch of different audio and video files. From a video of people talking while riding in a car in a busy city, it was able to remove all the background traffic sounds. On a 50-year-old vinyl record of a marching band, it was able to separate the drums from the instruments. From songs by The Beatles and Elton John, it perfectly isolated the vocal tracks.
