Adobe Audition quality noise reduction on mac os x
 

So I saw this noise reduction demo in (Windows) Adobe Audition. It was extraordinary. I would be hard to accurately describe just how truly magical it seemed to be. I don't possess the powers of description.

But anyway, I loathe the idea of even using a PC. Ick. There was some mention of an $800 ProTools plugin which was maybe similar, maybe not quite as good.

ProTools is another piece of technology not likely to be in my future (because of the dongle). I'm on Logic Express, which (as Logic users out there will know) has a steep learning curve.

Are there any great noise reduction tools out there that are non-Windows, non-ProTools? I also heard someone talking about some kind of freeware called "audacity" or something?

Audacity is a popular freeware audio editing program available in both MAC and PC versions and it does have a noise reduction tool in it among lots of other things. It's a pretty decent basic editor, especially considering the price. Other noise reduction tools that have a large following include Sony Noise Reduction 2 ($279) and Bias SoundSoap ($99)/ Soundsoap Pro ($599). These are plug-ins that work within almost any audio or video editing program - Soundforge, Vegas, Wavelab, Nuendo, Audition, Premiere, etc - that accepts VST or DirectX plugins. SoundSoap also has a stand-alone version of the program in the box as well. They're more sophisticated than Audacity's noise reduction and do a phenomenonal job of cleaning the garbage from a file. But NR software is only an emergency fallback in any case and should not be an excuse to be lax and record less than the best you possibly can on the set.

apple's soundtrack pro has worked a few miracles for me recently.

i've been able to really save some crap recordings (ancient non nr'd cassette, bad unavoidable background noise on a doc, etc.)

it works (i believe) a lot like audition's, where you find a section of just the isolated noise and provide that to the software as a sample. then the software basically analyzes the frequency of the given noise and reduces everything in that freq within a given dynamic range (specified by you.) if you overdo it, you'll hear some weird filter-sweepy type artifacting, but if you're subtle and your source material isn't complete and utter garbage, it can be a lifesaver. most recently i used it to clean up a sound effect sample i downloaded- it was one of those horrible 8 bit, 11khz type samples that seem to abound online. anyhow, you obviously can't turn something like that into a high fidelity recording, but i was able to eliminate a lot of the noise on the recording. a tiny bit of reverb to smooth the thing out (st pro also has some very good effects plugins) and i had a very usable effect.

if you can't spring for soundtracks pro, though, audition is certainly the best free app i've seen out there.

I heard about this. Apparently Apple gave a demo of it and a friend in attendence said it was miraculous, as you say.

I'll have to check it out.