D
Doctor Varney
Cave dwelling Luddite
I'm a bit lost with noise gating at the moment. Wonder if I could get some advice? I think I know enough to know how little I actually know on this subject, so any beginner advice would be appreciated.
Purpose: Speech for audio narration. Bits of music are involved, but we're concentrating on vocals here.
What I've Done So Far: Removed DC offset from samples; recorded at 44100 Hz, 32bit stereo. Added a noise gate to the vocal track on the mixer and given the volume about -10dB overhead - for now...
Environment: Computer. VST. Digitally recorded voice samples.
Results I'm Getting: The samples have some hiss. It seems to occupy a wide range of bands, not just in the uppermost registers. ( Before anyone says it - this is the LOWEST amount of noise I can achieve. Mic positioning, etc is the best it can be at this point. I've done everything I can in that dept. )
So, with the gate on, I'm stuck in the inevitable balance between hiss trails and losing the ends of words. A lot of these noise gates I'm trying happen to be features on compressors so it occurred to me to compress the signal a little to bring up the quieter bits that seem to be suffering the most from the effect of the gate closing too quickly down on it, before it's fully through. I reckoned a slight boost there would help push them through and my pronunciation is generally good, so t's and d's wouldn't get lost at least. But it's not really working. The results are still ropey and messy. So I don't know where to go from here.
Some of them don't always have a threshold setting and I thought that was important for gating, so you can set the noise threshold to what the gate should start to trigger...?
What I can't seem to suss with these noise gates though, is the compression side of things. I get the 'gating' idea:- release/ attack/ amount and all that... I also get the basic principle of compression (I know what it is) but I don't really know how to do it properly. I have no idea what ratio to use, for a start.
With all that said, these are only my guesses, going by what I've learnt so far. I have no idea if I'm doing this right.
And About The Order Of Things: Also I'm not sure where in the chain my noise gate should go. Makes sense it should go on the vocal track itself. But, also, I've experimented with it on a send insert, so I can route more than one source into it if I choose. I figured the EQ should come before the noise gate and the reverb should go last, so that the reverb tails weren't cut off by the gate. Does that seem about right?
Any help and advice would be most appreciated. I know you guys know your stuff and really look forward to hearing from you.
Dr. V
Purpose: Speech for audio narration. Bits of music are involved, but we're concentrating on vocals here.
What I've Done So Far: Removed DC offset from samples; recorded at 44100 Hz, 32bit stereo. Added a noise gate to the vocal track on the mixer and given the volume about -10dB overhead - for now...
Environment: Computer. VST. Digitally recorded voice samples.
Results I'm Getting: The samples have some hiss. It seems to occupy a wide range of bands, not just in the uppermost registers. ( Before anyone says it - this is the LOWEST amount of noise I can achieve. Mic positioning, etc is the best it can be at this point. I've done everything I can in that dept. )
So, with the gate on, I'm stuck in the inevitable balance between hiss trails and losing the ends of words. A lot of these noise gates I'm trying happen to be features on compressors so it occurred to me to compress the signal a little to bring up the quieter bits that seem to be suffering the most from the effect of the gate closing too quickly down on it, before it's fully through. I reckoned a slight boost there would help push them through and my pronunciation is generally good, so t's and d's wouldn't get lost at least. But it's not really working. The results are still ropey and messy. So I don't know where to go from here.
Some of them don't always have a threshold setting and I thought that was important for gating, so you can set the noise threshold to what the gate should start to trigger...?
What I can't seem to suss with these noise gates though, is the compression side of things. I get the 'gating' idea:- release/ attack/ amount and all that... I also get the basic principle of compression (I know what it is) but I don't really know how to do it properly. I have no idea what ratio to use, for a start.
With all that said, these are only my guesses, going by what I've learnt so far. I have no idea if I'm doing this right.
And About The Order Of Things: Also I'm not sure where in the chain my noise gate should go. Makes sense it should go on the vocal track itself. But, also, I've experimented with it on a send insert, so I can route more than one source into it if I choose. I figured the EQ should come before the noise gate and the reverb should go last, so that the reverb tails weren't cut off by the gate. Does that seem about right?
Any help and advice would be most appreciated. I know you guys know your stuff and really look forward to hearing from you.
Dr. V