Adding the right settings on noise reduction

[chills]

yeah ok anyone that does alot of work on audios with a piece of shit soundcard knows how imporant noise reduction is, but after i do it i often find that my vocals have a hollowing sound to them.. what kind of setting do you guys add onto the precisions and factor and smoothing amount.. and if any of you are real experienced with noise reduction what are the different sounds that the numbers in smoothing amount give you

[chrisharris]

There's no specific number, if that's what you're looking for here. It depends on the source material. I'll say this though...less is definitely more. I'll also add that the "Remove Hiss" feature leaves less artifacts than the noise reduction if you're talking about vocal tracks. I only use noise reduction to remove something like 60 cycle hum on a bass track. It works very well for that. On vocals, it tends to color them like you mentioned.

As a general guide, when I'm using hiss reduction on a vocal track, I only use it on the "light" setting, and I drag the noise floor adjust slider to at least -7. Hiss on a track is better than artificially sounding digital bubbles, in my opinion. As long as the hiss isn't hugely prominent, the human ear kind of ignores it in the context of a full mix.

[dobro]

"As long as the hiss isn't hugely prominent, the human ear kind of ignores it in the context of a full mix."

Bingo. Exactly true.

I've got an e-guitar track that I recorded too close to a CRT monitor, and so there's worse than hiss, there's buzz on the track. But as soon as the guitar starts playing in the whole mix, the buzz just becomes part of the sound of the guitar. I *could* noise-reduce it, but I'm not gonna, cuz if you run noise reduction on something with a lot of noise, it removes so much frequency range from the track that it spoils the sound.

[chills]

Originally Posted by chrisharris

I'll also add that the "Remove Hiss" feature leaves less artifacts than the noise reduction if you're talking about vocal tracks. I only use noise reduction to remove something like 60 cycle hum on a bass track. It works very well for that. On vocals, it tends to color them like you mentioned.

As a general guide, when I'm using hiss reduction on a vocal track, I only use it on the "light" setting, and I drag the noise floor adjust slider to at least -7. Hiss on a track is better than artificially sounding digital bubbles, in my opinion. As long as the hiss isn't hugely prominent, the human ear kind of ignores it in the context of a full mix.

yeah the thing that i usually look to reduce with noise reduction is the sound thats picked up from the soundcards its usually background humm.. i dont think most soundcards pick up hiss.. sometimes the hum gets so loud that it sounds like there is a fan in the background

[Cloneboy Studio]

Best noise reduction is not to record any noise.

[dobro]

But when you're up to your ass in alligators...

[Change of POETS]

Originally Posted by dobro

But when you're up to your ass in alligators...

I hate when that happens.