cleaning sound
 

Hello to all,

Just wondering if any of you experts can tell me how much I can repair/clean audio with background noise and what the best application might be for this purpose. I've had a little look at Adobe Audition but to be honest I'm not really sure what a lot of it does. I'm trying to get some clean dialogue between two actors.

Thanks in advance, Greg.

What sort of background noise are you talking about? If it's constant, like the drone of a fan for example, noise reduction software can be a big help. If it's irregular, like dog's barking or horns beeping, it gets pretty tricky.

I recently did an industrial video where we held an "interview" inside a moving car down the freeway (boy was that "fun".... not!). I had the pleasure of cleaning it up when we were done with it. I was able to clean it up quite well using Izotope's RX product. I also own SoundSoap, but found Izotope's product seemed to work much better. It still wasn't magic and I had to work at it, but in the end, we go very usable audio that fits in perfectly in the moving car. The downside is the product cost $349 USD, so it's not super cheap, but depending on what you are trying to clean up, this might be just the ticket.

Wayne

Wayne,

By any chance, did you have an opportunity to compare the standard version of RX with the "Advanced" version? I am curious if the enormous price difference is justified.

Thanks,
Martin

I did not compare the two. I already own other Izotope tools for the dithering and resampling, and while I'm sure some of the additional tools would have helped in cleaning up the sound, we found the results very acceptable using the standard version. If there is only one complaint I have with the product, it's that currently you have to use it as a standalone product. They are working on a plug-in for it, and that would have saved me a little time, although they do offer batch processing. However, I found for the car and road noise, it simply changed a bit too much depending on the speed of the vehicle and the amount of traffic on the freeway to be of much use.

Wayne

Hi Guys,

Thanks for the input. I guess I should of been more specific. I think 90% of the audio that needs attention either has vehichle or aircraft background noise in it. Do either of these count as constant. I can't make up my mind. I've had a quick go at this with the trial Adobe Audition but have found my initial results dissapointong as it changes the actors voices too much. However I'm a beginner at this sort of stuff so it's probably a case giving it a few more tries. Has anyone got any good tips? Also, might it be a case that once i have eliminated the unwanted sound I then need to re-embelish the actors voices with the same software (although, I wouldn't know where to start with that).Thinking about it I guess that's is what they call sound design?

Thanks in advance, Greg.

This would fall more into the realm of "audio sweetening" I'd imagine - noise removal, equalization, reverb matching, sound perspective. "Sound design" is more adding sounds, FX, ambience, etc to create a certain desired "feel" to the scene. At least the way I think of it, sweetening is more technical while sound design is more creative.

Find areas of the track that have the undesired noise only and sample it for removal in your noise reduction software. Unless it's really broad-band and obtrusive you should be able to reduce it signifigantly without affecting the desired elements too much. Izotrope Rx is available for a free trial download - you either can't save the result or it puts beeps into it but downloading the trial would let you experiment to see if it'll take care of your problem before committing any money to it. Give it a shot and see what happens.

Thanks Steve,

A wealth of knowledge as usual. Would you happen to know if I could do this with Adobe Audition or would I be better sticking to Izitrope as you suggested. As I said before I have very little experience in this field and I'm not sure yet how much I can get out of the Audition software.


Thanks again, Greg.

There's a bit of a learning curve with each and the two products compliment each other well. Best thing I can suggest is to experiment a bit with both of them.

Many thanks Steve. I actually meant to ask a couple of other question but they didn't post for some reason. However, I'm going to look into this a little on my own first ( do a bit of the leg work as they say.) and stop pestering you

Many Thanks again mate, Greg.

Audition can do some amazing cleanup if :

you need to learn to use spectral view, and remove noise only where its most objectionable

learn to do it in several small steps rather then one large one. gentle does it

have patience when doing it.

learn to use AU's noise removal tools.

its an hour or two in the manual and just playing with it should get you going.

Thanks Steve that sounds promosing I shall stick with it.


Greg