Enhancing/amplifying distant sounding or muted vocals

[eyeofnewt]

I have a "homemade" Indian classical dance CD that I purchased online which features both instrumentation and spoken vocals, kind of like rap. The vocals are essential as they are spoken syllables which indicate the kind of movement is to be made. Unfortunately, the instruments and percussion appear far louder and "nearer" than the vocals, which sound very washed out.

What band equalizer presents or AU filter settings should I use to enhance the audio track so that only the vocals are amplified and brought to the front, so to speak?

I uploaded three short sample tracks from this album to illustrate the issue I have here: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/lsblnoo8uff1psi/_ZaW4dZBWd

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

[CDJonah_alt]

Unfortunately I think there is little you can do. I tried one
example,split to tracks, inverted the phase and merged with the other
track and basically got the same thing; i.e, I was hoping that there
would be a different stereo effect for the voice. There may be other
ways to try this game, but I am not hopeful as there seems to be little
stereo effect on the music and I would not expect more stereo on the
voice. I also listened to the two tracks separately and each sounded
very similar.

As the Indian music has very percussive elements, the frequency
bandwidth of it is huge. Try selecting a section with voice and music
in it, bring up the 10 band equalizer, put a boost to the intermediate
frequencies and see if that helps. I sort of thought that cutting
frequencies above 2 khz helped but that may be only a figment of my
imagination.

Chuck

On 1/5/13 5:08 AM, eyeofnewt wrote:

[Gerard Bik]

Chuck is right, bringing the voice to the front is not really possible.
The voice frequencies can be enhanced with an equalizer. Cut
everything above 5000 Hz and below 800 Hz, and enhance the part in
between. Play around with the sliders until hearing the voice is
easier.

But this "telephone sound" may not be the effect you are looking for.

Gerard
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