voice-isolatorby elevenlabs

Remove background noise and isolate vocals/speech from audio using ElevenLabs Voice Isolator (audio isolation) API. Use when cleaning up noisy recordings,…

npx skills add https://github.com/elevenlabs/skills --skill voice-isolator

ElevenLabs Voice Isolator

Removes background noise from audio and isolates vocals/speech — useful for cleaning up noisy recordings, prepping audio for transcription, or pulling dialogue out of a mixed track.

Setup: See Installation Guide. For JavaScript, use @elevenlabs/* packages only.

Quick Start

Python

from elevenlabs import ElevenLabs

client = ElevenLabs()

with open("noisy.mp3", "rb") as audio_file:
    audio_stream = client.audio_isolation.convert(audio=audio_file)

with open("clean.mp3", "wb") as f:
    for chunk in audio_stream:
        f.write(chunk)

JavaScript

import { ElevenLabsClient } from "@elevenlabs/elevenlabs-js";
import { createReadStream, createWriteStream } from "fs";

const client = new ElevenLabsClient();

const audioStream = await client.audioIsolation.convert({
  audio: createReadStream("noisy.mp3"),
});

audioStream.pipe(createWriteStream("clean.mp3"));

cURL

curl -X POST "https://api.elevenlabs.io/v1/audio-isolation" \
  -H "xi-api-key: $ELEVENLABS_API_KEY" \
  -F "[email protected]" \
  --output clean.mp3

Parameters

ParameterTypeDefaultDescription
audiofile (required)Audio file with vocals/speech to isolate
file_formatstringotherother for any encoded audio, or pcm_s16le_16 for 16-bit PCM mono @ 16kHz little-endian (lower latency)

Isolating from a URL

import requests
from io import BytesIO
from elevenlabs import ElevenLabs

client = ElevenLabs()

audio_url = "https://example.com/noisy.mp3"
response = requests.get(audio_url)
audio_data = BytesIO(response.content)

audio_stream = client.audio_isolation.convert(audio=audio_data)

with open("clean.mp3", "wb") as f:
    for chunk in audio_stream:
        f.write(chunk)

Low-Latency PCM Input

If you already have raw 16-bit PCM mono @ 16kHz, passing file_format="pcm_s16le_16" skips decoding and reduces latency:

audio_stream = client.audio_isolation.convert(
    audio=pcm_bytes,
    file_format="pcm_s16le_16",
)

Supported Formats

Any common encoded audio/video container works as input (MP3, WAV, M4A, FLAC, OGG, WebM, MP4, etc.). Response is a streamed MP3 by default.

Common Workflows

  • Clean up interview/podcast recordings — strip room tone, HVAC, traffic before editing.
  • Prep noisy audio for Speech-to-Text — isolate voice first, then pass through speech_to_text.convert() for better transcription accuracy.
  • Extract dialogue from mixed tracks — pull vocals out of a track with music/SFX.
  • Pre-processing for Voice Changer — isolate the source voice before applying voice transformation.

Error Handling

try:
    audio_stream = client.audio_isolation.convert(audio=audio_file)
except Exception as e:
    print(f"Voice isolation failed: {e}")

Common errors:

  • 401: Invalid API key
  • 422: Invalid parameters (e.g. wrong file_format for the supplied audio)
  • 429: Rate limit exceeded

References

NotebookLM Web Importer

Import web pages and YouTube videos to NotebookLM with one click. Trusted by 200,000+ users.

Install Chrome Extension