missing vocal track from songs

Question

missing vocal track from songs

As stated in the title, some of my songs are missing entire vocal tracks.

I,, noticed this from a song that i play very often when out of nowhere the vocals were completely missing.

First happened in my car. Every single song before-hand had all the audio and nothing missing.

The song in question had no altered equalizer settings as every part of the song where instruments were playing had nothing out of the ordinary, all the instruments sounded normal.

On my computer the song has all the vocals and audio after testing with the headphones and with the speakers.

After resynching the song, i tested it on my phone. Once again no vocals; neither through the headphones nor the phone speakers.

This song is NOT downloaded from the cloud and has its own dedicated original file on my computer. WHICH DOES still have the vocal track when played through windows media player.

iPhone 5c, iOS 9.1

Posted on Jan 10, 2016 8:30 AM

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Answer 1

turingtest2

Level 10

278,577 points

Mar 9, 2016 12:16 PM in response to A BoxOf Raisins

If a song is in your library and you enable Apple Music then that song should become available to you via Apple Music even if it is a track that isn't available in the iTunes Store. Apple haven't released a complete description of how it all works as far as I am aware, but I see the potential for matching a track in your library with one that they already have on file with a similar audio fingerprint. That fingerprinting scheme ought to be able to tell the difference between the same track with and without vocals (and in ideal world explicit vs. non explicit versions) but perhaps sometimes it can't. Such a confusion between two alternate mixes of the same track is the only mechanism I can think of that would account for your experience as described.

tt2

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Answer 2

Mar 9, 2016 9:29 AM in response to A BoxOf Raisins

I don't see how you fail to understand that this song isn't available on iTunes or Apple Music.

Regardless, I solved the problem by keeping Apple Music disabled, deleting the bad songs from iTunes and my phone and replacing them with the original file from my computer.

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Answer 3

turingtest2

Level 10

278,577 points

Jan 10, 2016 11:49 AM in response to A BoxOf Raisins

Do you have an active subscription to either iTunes Match or Apple Music? Vocals are not stored separately from the rest of the audio, and the iPhone has no features for filtering out the vocals. Your device simply must have a different copy of the track from the one in your library. iTunes Match or Apple Music are the likely sources of confusion as their matching algorithms may make imperfect matches.

tt2

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Answer 4

Jan 28, 2016 9:47 AM in response to turingtest2

The song was working perfectly even with Apple Music. The song in question isnt even available on apple music.

One day i had done a sync to add a few new songs and suddenly this song and one other no longer had audio tracks.

The problem persists after iOS 9.2.1

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Answer 5

Jan 28, 2016 10:43 AM in response to A BoxOf Raisins

I would bet the reason is that the song w/o vocals that you're playing in Apple Music is NOT the same version of the song in your personal collection, Apple having mismatched your song with one of its own that you don't want to hear.

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Answer 6

turingtest2

Level 10

278,577 points

Jan 28, 2016 11:12 AM in response to A BoxOf Raisins

If Apple Music or iCloud Music Library is enabled on the phone then your tracks are no longer synced directly from your iTunes library but instead loaded from iTunes in the Cloud, where there is the potential for a mismatch. You only have to read reports of people complaining that explicit versions of songs have been replaced with clean ones to see how common that is. If you have the original version in your library still then backup your device, restore to factory settings, then restore your backup, and sync the device with what is in your library rather than Apple's "best guess" of what is in your library.

tt2

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