PC Recording software with decent noise reduction

[ljguitar]

Originally Posted by ronmac

I'll add my vote for Adobe Audition. Very nice noise reduction and editing features.

Hi guys...
You are aware it is only available to PC users and not Macintosh OSX users, right?

[TBman]

Originally Posted by ljguitar

Hi guys...
You are aware it is only available to PC users and not Macintosh OSX users, right?

What's a Macintosh

[Bob Womack]

Originally Posted by ljguitar

Hi Bob...
Yup...owned and operated both a Tascam 40-4 and an 80-8, and had many 2 track reel-to-reel units over the years. Spinning up, degaussing, aligning, cleaning heads, reference tones, etc.

I started in the '70s, so I remember that gear and everything associated with it. I owned a little studio based around a Tascam 4040 at one point. On the pro side, I began doing post-production in the analog linear days, without automation. So, like you, my gear experiences have read like a history of audio and video gear from the 50s to the present. My first single-ended noise reduction device was an Allison Keypex I. Talk about a nightmare! A Keypex was a stepped array of fixed-gain voltage-controlled amplifiers, cascade-style. As a signal faded up or down, you could sometimes hear the zipper-like sound of the cascade of VCAs opening and closing!

Do you recommend de-noising after everything else has been done to the recording (reverb, compression, EQ etc)?

No, I'd de-noise the raw tracks, then process them for several reasons:
1. Most single-ended noise reduction has an effect on the trailing dynamics because it usually ends up using an expander or a gain-based algorithm. That will usually audibly affect reverb.

2. When I'm EQ-ing, I usually want to hear the effect of the EQ on the BG noise. That's possibly a holdover from my analog days, when every positive EQ change had a negative effect on S/N ratio, but there it is.

3. Any compression will typically make isolating a background noise from an foreground noise harder, so its best to leave the dynamic difference between the two intact until you sort the problems.

Have fun!

Bob

[ljguitar]

Originally Posted by Bob Womack

...I'd de-noise the raw tracks, then process them for several reasons:
1. Most single-ended noise reduction has an effect on the trailing dynamics because it usually ends up using an expander or a gain-based algorithm. That will usually audibly affect reverb.

2. When I'm EQ-ing, I usually want to hear the effect of the EQ on the BG noise. That's possibly a holdover from my analog days, when every positive EQ change had a negative effect on S/N ratio, but there it is.

3. Any compression will typically make isolating a background noise from an foreground noise harder, so its best to leave the dynamic difference between the two intact until you sort the problems.

Have fun!

Hi Bob...
You have had hands on with some ''awesome'' gear and lots of legacy stuff.

I suspected what you recommend, but needed to ask. I did it both ways experimenting today and it seemed better to denoise the original file and take care to get a proper sample.

I appreciate your taking time to answer.

[Bob Womack]

Originally Posted by ljguitar

Hi Bob...
You have had hands on with some ''awesome'' gear and lots of legacy stuff.

Every once in a while I like to step back, look at things, and remind myself that when it comes to gear, I have led a life of privilege. I've been really blessed.

I appreciate your taking time to answer.

And again, its my pleasure and I enjoy yakking about what I do.

Bob

[Yamaha Man]

Adobe's Audition 2.0 works great for me on my PC.

[woodyboyd]

The best noise reduction is NOT to have any, ie, sound proof room. Call me old school but fix is what you do to your cat, Not your recording

[Yamaha Man]

Sorry bucko, but I can't afford to build an anechoic chamber. Sometimes noise reduction is something you must do after the fact of a recording you had no control over. Say like something that was recorded 50 years ago. Noise reduction tools can come in very handy. Even with newer recordings, sometimes there's a cough or a phone, or some other distracting noise you'd prefer to eliminate. Having the tools to do the job, is better than not having the tools.

[ljguitar]

Originally Posted by woodyboyd

The best noise reduction is NOT to have any, ie, sound proof room. Call me old school but fix is what you do to your cat, Not your recording

Hi Woody...
In an ideal world things work the way you suggest.

If I take my field recorder to guitar society to capture some live recordings, and the venue moves us from our regular room to a different one over the kitchen which has a hood fan vibrating under our feet the whole time (which they did last month), it's nice to know I can correct it from this point on.

Or if the high school band wants a recording done in their rehearsal room where there is a ventilation fan running the entire time that cannot be turned off, now I have a way to deal with it other than ''we have to just live with it''.

Not every opportunity to record is able to get into my studio.

[Wingman]

I used to have access to Adobe Audition and it's great. Overall a very good choice for a DAW solution. That said, I've used Sound Forge with it's N.R. plugin for years and to my ears it is even a bit better than the N.R. function of Audition. It seems to be able to get out more noise before distorting the part of the track you want to keep. I happen to have an old version of Sound Forge, the plugin, and Vegas so that's what I'm using. (Sound Forge basically plugs in to Vegas as the two track editor inside Vegas' multitrack environment.) Btw, Vegas is also a very capable video editing program as well. But if you are starting from scratch, the Adobe solution including Premiere Pro for video is the way to go. Oh, Audition also has a NR function that lets you graphically remove or greatly lessen transient sounds as well. Like a cough or door slam. Sound Forge doesn't do that. Haven't run into anything else that does either. I know we all want a solution that costs pennys, but it's interesting that the first time I saw broad spectrum noise reduction it was a stand alone program from Sonic Solutions that cost something like $30,000.00 back in the late 80's or early 90's as I recall.

[Bob Womack]

Originally Posted by Wingman

Oh, Audition also has a NR function that lets you graphically remove or greatly lessen transient sounds as well. Like a cough or door slam. Sound Forge doesn't do that. Haven't run into anything else that does either. I know we all want a solution that costs pennys, but it's interesting that the first time I saw broad spectrum noise reduction it was a stand alone program from Sonic Solutions that cost something like $30,000.00 back in the late 80's or early 90's as I recall.

Was that the early CEDAR noise reduction system? I remember when there were studios that basically did nothing but CEDAR processing work. You'd book into them to clean up a recording like you would book a mastering studio.

Steinberg offers WaveLab, which has a plug-in that does graphic removal of transient material as well as steady-state noise. It's not cheap. I've had pretty good results with it, though. You look at a spectral representation of the signal and use the mouse to designate the portion you wish to remove. You can, thus, see a transient, find a chunk of the normal BG ambience of the recording, and copy that over the transient to remove it. You can also look at a portion of the signal that has both a foreground sound and a background transient and copy and paste only a portion of the spectrum over the portion of the spectrum that doesn't conflict with the foreground sound, in order to either remove or reduce the transient. It's incredibly powerful. You can imagine that this kind of editing requires a lot of processing power. As a result, there is a clip length restriction measured in seconds. The typical process is to export a clip from your main editor, load it into WaveLab, treat it, export, and re-import into your editor. Obviously, given time constraints, the amount of time and effort required to use this system limits its use to remediation of extreme situations.

I've also been having really good results in Nuendo going down to the lowest zoom level in the editing window and drawing out transients with the mouse. With a little creativity and experience, you can actually draw out a the transient, even if it is superimposed over a foreground sound. You can also zoom down to the tightest zoom level and copy adjacent wave excursions over the contaminated one(s).

Bob

[Smurf42]

Wave Pad has a NR plugin, and cost the same as Audacity. I have been a CEP 2.1 user for a long time. There were some real versions for sale on Ebay a few days ago for $100 including shipping, and it came with a lot of loop disks (I bought 2 copys from Street Factory and was pleased both times)

I have Sound Forge 6, but it has no NR plugin...is there a place to get it?

[zenpicker]

Since Audition's NR is getting some play here, I might as well paste in a note I wrote to another member with some lessons learned about the tool. Perhaps it will be helpful to other Audition users. And I would WELCOME comments back from those who know more than I do about this stuff (Bob... ), as these are just the comments of one ignorant hacker.

-----------
- Of the various NR effects AA offers (in the Effects|Restoration menu of the Edit View), the one with the most flexibility for removing background mike hiss is actually the one called Noise Reduction (process) rather than Hiss Reduction. I found the latter too blunt of an instrument - it often tampers with musical aspects of your piece, not just hiss.

- When you Capture Noise Reduction Profile (Alt-N), be sure to... a) capture a separate profile for each sound source - each mike, for example, has its own self-noise characteristics; b) select at least 1.5 - 2 seconds of audio with nothing but the noise - i.e., no playing, no extraneous sounds from you or the room, no joggling of equipment, etc. I try to remember to observe a moment of silence, as it were, either at the beginning or the ending of each take, just so I can capture that noise profile later. If you choose a section of audio that has extraneous sounds in it, e.g. some little sound of you shifting in your chair or whatever, this will going right into the noise analyzer and similar frequencies will be removed...even if they have musical significance in another context. Removing the sound of your sleeve brushing your guitar might also remove some interesting overtone in your music, just because the wave patterns are somewhat similar to the noise reduction algorithm. This is a very important point.

- On the Noise Reduction dialog, lower the Noise Reduction Level as far as possible while maintaining acceptable noise reduction (as judged by listening to the Preview). I.e., if you can get away with 60% noise reduction and still detect little or no hiss, choose this over 90% reduction. This is the best way to preserve useful overtones and musical artifacts while purging audible noise. If you go too far, you may hear weird otherworldly artifacts that sound like a faint metallic echo - these are musical signals that the NR algorithm has overzealously scrubbed. You're losing musical quality there, and I have never found a way to remove these gremlins when they creep in.

In general, my understanding is that NR is always a balance between reducing noise and preserving the music. Total elimination of noise may deaden the music too much.

- Always do the work with headphones, the best you can lay hands on. You just can't hear the nuances on open speakers. The opposite goes for EQ and most other types of processing, which should not be done on phones.

HTH

[zenpicker]

Originally Posted by woodyboyd

The best noise reduction is NOT to have any, ie, sound proof room. Call me old school but fix is what you do to your cat, Not your recording

Purely as a philosophical question, don't you still have self-noise from mikes if you use them, regardless of room treatment?

[TBman]

I purchased Adobe Audition 1.5 tonight and it has what I needed. Thanks everyone.