How do I reduce the car's noise?

[oxoree]

Hello, I 'm newbie, I just bought audition CS5.5.
I have a conversation between two people in a moving car.
The file is mp3. How can I reduce the car's noise and hear the conversation clear?

 

[Seidy]

Depending on source material you MIGHT get it a bit better with some noise reduction and expander/gate. You could post us a clip though so we can hear what can be done.

 

[ecc83]

Hello, I 'm newbie, I just bought audition CS5.5.
I have a conversation between two people in a moving car.
The file is mp3. How can I reduce the car's noise and hear the conversation clear?

I have AA1.5 and that has a noise reducer in it that is of the "noise sample" type, i.e. you find a section of the recording without speech and "plug" that into the noise reducer software. This works well for periodic noise like engine/transmission noise, not so well for aperiodic "white" noises like road and wind. There are other forms of noise reducer in AA but these all need using with care and taste lest folks end up sounding like gargling goldfish!....

But FIRST you need that file as a .wav. Quite easy, open it in AA and "save as" .wav.

Dave.

 

[Bobbsy]

The noise reduction in Audition works pretty well on the general, droning background but less so on noises that come and go.

Find a short bit of your recording with no actual speech and hit the capture noise print button, then hit "select all" and play with the slider controlling the NR. I'd suggest doing only a small bit of reduction at this point to avoid artefacts.

Then adjust the FFT size to a higher setting and repeat the above. To adjust the FFT, you may need to go to "Advanced" settings...I can't remember the situation in CS5.5.

Anyhow, repeat the process two or three times until you get enough intelligibility--don't try to make the car sound like a studio. It never will but the voices will start to sound like a science fiction effect.

BTW, ecc83 is right about working with .wav files--but Audition converts to wave on opening so all you have to do is make sure you "Save As" .wav when saving. If you keep copying to MP3, it'll be a new compression each time and the file will soon start to sound very rubbish.

 

[ecc83]

"--but Audition converts to wave on opening "

Din't know that Bobbs, ta. I would remind all once again that I am very much a dilettante with a lot of this software, I am much more a hardware guy really.

For those that don't have a Audition but need a clean up prog' download the demo of Sony Soundforge. A very nice editing suite in any case, wish I could justify the cost.

Some 4 years ago my daughter asked me to transcribe her teenage punk 45 collection. 100 or so B'dy sides of grunge and there is only SO much Paul Weller an old guy can stand! But, having grabbed it all as 24 bit .wavs I stuffed it thru' SF and made quite a decent set of CDs for her.

Dave.

 

[Bobbsy]

"--but Audition converts to wave on opening "

Din't know that Bobbs, ta. I would remind all once again that I am very much a dilettante with a lot of this software, I am much more a hardware guy really.

For those that don't have a Audition but need a clean up prog' download the demo of Sony Soundforge. A very nice editing suite in any case, wish I could justify the cost.

Some 4 years ago my daughter asked me to transcribe her teenage punk 45 collection. 100 or so B'dy sides of grunge and there is only SO much Paul Weller an old guy can stand! But, having grabbed it all as 24 bit .wavs I stuffed it thru' SF and made quite a decent set of CDs for her.

Dave.

The conversion to wave (the format Audition works on internally) is a double edged sword. If you save as MP3, you're doing a new MP3 encoding each time you save and there's a definite concatenation of compression artefacts. There's very much a "compression cliff" that you hit after several "open to wave, save to MP3" repeats.

...so, your advice to use Save As and keep it as wave from then on (or at least until you're finished processing) was spot on even if by accident.

I had a play with Sound Forge once but didn't get on with the user interface. However, that's very much a personal decision, probably because I've been using Cool Edit/Audition since 1996 when it first came out.