The future?

As for the wall of sound approach by The Dead, its highly impractical to use the crude noise canceling techniques they did back in the day.
Er, you mean feedback cancelling? You cant have a PA speaker with a single mic pointed directly at it... I have to admire the 'nads it took to pull that Wall concept off, even if possible someone happened to be on acid when they thought of it. "We'll stack the PA behind the band" ... "What about the vocal mics; how's that going to work?" ... "I have an Idea!"

With all the digital gobbeltygook available today, would it still be possible to pull off? Vocal mics pointed directly at the main PA speakers; only the vocalist comes through, any sound from the PA speaker doesnt. I'd put my money down on "Not".
 
Virtual DJ can separate vocals, drums and bass from memory; quality depends on the power of the computer it is running on

Apple Music can remove or reduce vocals on an iPhone by displaying lyrics and tapping the microphone button. No idea if this is done on the phone or on the server, but the quality is better than most if not all the karaoke tracks I have heard

Brian
 
Those of you with an interest in this type of technology may wish to visit my website, monotoSTEREO.info, which I had started over nine years ago. The website is a free, not-for-profit informational website that provides a collection of resources for individuals interested in upmixing older mono source material to stereo through the use of spectral editing and music source separation. Although I feature many software applications and plugins on the website, as well as links to a number of commercially available releases that make use of this technology, there are no advertisements on the website at all. In fact, since its inception, I have paid for all of the expenses of the website out of my own pocket! In the nine years that the website has been available, it has been visited almost 77,000 times by individuals in 188 countries! I'm not talking about "simulated stereo"... I am referring to stereo which sounds like it had been mixed from multitrack session tapes, had they existed! Be sure to check out the hundreds of examples linked to on the MEDIA pages of the website. For those who wish to delve deeper into the technical aspects of this technology, there are over 1,700 research papers, presentations, etc. linked to on the RESEARCH pages of the website. There is also a companion Facebook page for the website where I post updates and related content. Be sure to "Like" the Facebook page to follow it for the updates. I hope that you find the website informative, useful, and thought provoking! ~ Chris