Background noise

[JasonS1]

Does anyone know how to eliminate wind and small background voices? I've tried using the background eliminator on the tape I'm cleaning up, but it takes all of my clarinet's and other quiet instruments with it. (I'll probably lose my timpani pretty easily. Grrrr...) Note that I'm using a video tape as my audio source.

[camn]

you might try a noise gate.. but it might have the same problem.

Question: are you getting a sample of your background noise and then trying the reduction?

xxoxo

[JasonS1]

I've tried the noise gate. It works fine on loud parts and instruments (like trumpets) but I lose all of my low end instruments (like tuba and timpani). The reduction will eliminate my flutes and clarinets. The parametric EQ doesn't seem to be of much help either. The only way I can think of would be a pain in the rear. That's go through with the Graphic EQ and balance out the background sounds. But with a nine minute piece that could take months!

[dobro]

Wind and small background voices? You recorded this live and outdoors with a video cam?

[JasonS1]

Sort of. This was video tape of my high school's marching band performance at their state competition. The mic placement was absolutley horrible. It was placed at the top level of an outdoor football field seating area (as for why that placement I don't know). Small gusts of wind kick in at the most inappropiate times. I knew it was going to be a difficult task to clean it up, but this is the best performance out of one of the few recordings I have access to.

[camn]

if the wind gusts drown out certain instruments and are on the same frequency, then I think it's impossible with this equipment. sad but true.

xoxoxo

[mrclay]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>I've tried using the background eliminator on the tape I'm cleaning up, but it takes all of my clarinets and other quiet instruments with it...<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

To remove some noise w/o losing your important audio: Mark a selection where the band isn't playing and the crowd is relatively silent and there's no wind. You'll probably need a good second or two of it so this may be impossible. Now go into noise reduction and "get profile from selection" and "close". Now select the area that most resembles the rest of the tape and go back into noise reduction. With recordings like this you won't be able to get away w/ more than 20% or so noise removal, but it'll help.. The secret is playing w/ the frequency graph so you remove noise from most of the frequencies where the noise is and leave the rest unaffected (where your quiet instruments are). In the latest CEP 1.2 you can preview this and mess w/ the graph to see what works best. If your camcorder had a very active compression on the audio it'll make the noise reduction attempt pretty futile I'm afraid.

Wind gusts: If they sound like I think they do, you might try filtering out the ultra low frequencies using the FFT filter (try a high pass at 200Hz?), but just across the gusts. You'll probably want to again play with the reduction graph while previewing the FFT filter (a sloping cut will sound more natural), but if you can at least get rid of the big plosive sounds it won't jump out as much and maybe you can tame the rest by just adding mild compression..

I love working on these worst-case recordings