Room tone?
 

Ok, newbie question. How do I get rid of room tone and ambience noise live. I know how to remove the noise in post, but it takes away dialouge quality. What do i need to record live audio without room tone. Thanks.

Close micing your talent will eliminate most of the roomtone. However, it's best at the end of the shoot to record some room tone to add underneath in post (at your control) to keep the sound from being dead.

If the ambient sound of the environment is loud enough to interfere with getting good quality dialog, you need to re-locate or remove the offending noise while taping.

-gb-

I've had pretty good success with this software:
www.harbal.com
Harbal is, fundamentally, an EQ shaper, better than a multi band processor. I use it to shape tonality, including removing unwanted resonances from my mix.

Bill, that software sounds interesting, but I can't get the link to load - is it down or maybe at a different location?

To the original question - you mostly just have to be creative. Minimize what you can - unplug any refrigerators if possible, air conditioners, flourescent lights, computers, etc. Then try to cover up what's left. Bring blankets to muffle unseen windows or cracks under doors. Bring socks for leaky radiator valves. If there's a mattress around, use it to block out the worst direction, or to absorb echo. You can get carpet samples from most carpet places for about $2 - little 2-3 sq. ft. sections of carpet good for muffling small areas. I once use two litttle pieces to muffle an Arri's noisy film magazine - worked great!

Just FYI - room tone and ambient noise are two different things. Ambient noise is usually bad - fans blowing, fridges runing, camera noises etc. But room tone is the "sound of silence" of a space, the qualities that give it presence and reality. Dialog without room tone such as might be recorded in ADR in a sound "proof" studio will be dull and lifeless and needs some tone mixed in under it to give it some reality. Tone is also important to use to bridge the gap between audio from the set when cutting clips together, especially when using cutaways that were shot MOS. You may find inserting these shots lengthened the scene leaving gaps in the recorded tracks.

Steve beat me to it.

Room tone is your friend. The rest of the extraneous sounds are your enemy.

Regards,

Ty Ford

sorry...the url i posted is wrong
it should be www.har-bal.com