Filtering out background noise

Fieryjack · Post by **Fieryjack** » Sun Jun 17, 2007 10:27 am

I am trying to clean up some audio taken from an interview.....the interview footage was done in a cafe and there is so much background talking, coffee cups, etc.

What frequencies should I hone in on/are there any tools to help zoom in on my subject (male voice). Need to eliminate all this background crap....what about Apple's "Soundtrack?" Doesn't it have cool tools that can zero in on things?

Thanks

EarlSlick · Post by **EarlSlick** » Sun Jun 17, 2007 10:54 am

The frequency of a human voice is between 1-3kHz. You could start by doing some surgical eqing to try to pull out the voices more. Other than that, there are some noise cancelling plugins in the waves package that can be useful, but I have never tried to remove anything other than scratchiness, hum, or hiss with them. You can go to the waves website and try out the demo. http://www.waves.com/. Hope this helps.

Bart

Johnny B · Post by **Johnny B** » Sun Jun 17, 2007 10:57 am

What is the purpose? Broadcast? Some sort of release? Or just make it more listenable for transcription?

EQ is probably your best bet. Boost various frequencies to find where the worst of the noise is, then pull those out. I don't know what "Soundtrack" will do for you, though, as I don't have it.

radical recording · Post by **radical recording** » Mon Jun 18, 2007 4:31 am

Bias Soundsoap works wonders on that sort of thing. Sometimes it takes multiple passes, each time pulling down selected frequencies until you get it to sound right.

If you don't have that use a parametric EQ and pull down the extreme highs and lows and find the offending noises in the middle to yank out of there with a real narrow setting.

Diligence is your best friend here.

kayagum · Post by **kayagum** » Mon Jun 18, 2007 5:40 am

Adobe Audition has a noise reduction plug that is worth the price of the entire DAW. It also has a spectral frequency analyzer view where you can visually see and edit frequency specific ranges.

Law enforcement agencies use this to clean up surveillance tapes, and it saved me on a CD project a couple of years ago when a friend needed to clean up a badly recorded project.

http://adobe.com/audition

Smitty · Post by **Smitty** » Mon Jun 18, 2007 6:15 am

rulesforradicals wrote:Bias Soundsoap works wonders on that sort of thing. Sometimes it takes multiple passes, each time pulling down selected frequencies until you get it to sound right.

+1

Jeff White · Post by **Jeff White** » Mon Jun 18, 2007 8:43 am

I have been working for the past two months on an Indie Film that was recorded horribly. I've basically been hired to attempt to save thousands of dollars paid out to a couple of idiots who have no business ever recording anything ever again.

I am using a combination of Soundtrack Pro and EQ. the guy who hired me bought me STP, and I have been pleasantly surprised. I did a lot of research regarding things. Folks who work in film HATE Soundsoap (the $129 version) but tend to like Soundsoap Pro. Audacity is shareware or freeware and supposedly has NR that is decent, though I haven't used it. It was, however, my backup plan to STP.

good luck!

Jeff

Mark Alan Miller · Post by **Mark Alan Miller** » Mon Jun 18, 2007 1:06 pm

I just wanted to chime in that the human voice occupies a greater bandwidth than 1k - 3.5k as mentioned above. That's really the 'clarity' or 'intelligibility' range, but sibilants and fricatives go much higher (6k for sure, and high 'air' overtones well above that) and fundemenatal pitches much lower (as low as sub-100Hz).
Traditional telephone systems have a bandwidth of something like 300Hz to 3-4kHz, if that tells you anything... (one doesn't need to go as low as the fundemental pitches for speech, as there are enough overtones present that the brain 'fills them in' so 300Hz is generally low enough, but having lower frequencies adds/retains a sense of 'warmth'. Going much higher than 3 or 4kHz isn't really needed for intelligibility, but sure helps with timbre! Openness/detail/'fidelity' and all that.)

Johnny B · Post by **Johnny B** » Mon Jun 18, 2007 5:58 pm

kayagum wrote:Adobe Audition has a noise reduction plug that is worth the price of the entire DAW. It also has a spectral frequency analyzer view where you can visually see and edit frequency specific ranges.
http://adobe.com/audition

Absolutely! When I finally switch to a Mac, I'll keep a Windows machine around just for that. It's the best you're going to get for less than the price of CEDAR. I've done tons of cleanup with that: old 4-track cassette masters, transfers from vinyl, badly recorded live shows, etc. One has to be careful, though. It's really easy to go too far and it then it sounds bad but in a completely different way.

GooberNumber9 · Post by **GooberNumber9** » Mon Jun 18, 2007 10:29 pm

Johnny B wrote:Absolutely! When I finally switch to a Mac, I'll keep a Windows machine around just for that.

You don't have to! Just use Parallels, Boot Camp, or both! If you use both you have the choice of rebooting into Windows to run a full DAW, or you can use Parallels to open your Windows apps right in OSX (not so good for DAW use, but Quicken works fine). I can't imagine buying a Windows PC ever again.

Todd Wilcox

littlepokey · Post by **littlepokey** » Mon Jun 18, 2007 10:34 pm

Amen to the Audition stuff. I dont know how the noise reduction utility works, but it seems like magic to me. Only when I really push it to the extremes can I hear some phase-y artifacts. The spectrum Frequency analysis view is very cool too. Recently, I was able to see and really minimize a cough on a horn track in about a minute in front of a client. I looked pretty good.

Johnny B · Post by **Johnny B** » Tue Jun 19, 2007 5:22 pm

GooberNumber9 wrote:
Johnny B wrote:Absolutely! When I finally switch to a Mac, I'll keep a Windows machine around just for that.
You don't have to! Just use Parallels, Boot Camp, or both! If you use both you have the choice of rebooting into Windows to run a full DAW, or you can use Parallels to open your Windows apps right in OSX (not so good for DAW use, but Quicken works fine). I can't imagine buying a Windows PC ever again.

Buy? I don't buy 'em, I build 'em. That's what's kept me from buying a Mac. they're too bleeding expensive. I can bolt together a Windows or a Linux machine that blows away a Dell for like half the price of the Dell. I'll have to pay twice as much for the Mac. Anyway, there are other advantages to having two machines, even if it takes up more space, so I'll just keep the old one rather than dual boot the new one.

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Filtering out background noise

Filtering out background noise

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