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, before writing any code: if ELEVENLABS_API_KEY isn't set for this project, run npx -y @elevenlabs/cli@latest onboard init from the app's folder first and follow what it prints: it signs the user in and stores a key for the project, so nobody copies one by hand. Otherwise see the 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"));

CLI

elevenlabs audio-isolation convert --audio noisy.mp3 --output clean.mp3

Parameters

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
audio	file (required)	—	Audio file with vocals/speech to isolate
file_format	string	other	other 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

• Installation Guide