i been there dude...heres the shourt course on NR...
CoolEditPro (CEP...lol) Noise reduction (NR) setup is fairly powerful, in my honest opinion. It amazed me when i first got it to work, and it still kinda floors me. Just when i think i found the signal contamination noise that it wont take out, it makes it quiet! I love it.
I dont even bother with hiss removal, i use NR for everything. Heres the basic idea of what you are doing:
1) you need to find a spot in the track where there is silence for this feature to really shine. Not silence, but a lack of signal. The more the better.
TIP: ALWAYS record several seconds of complete silence at the beginning and end of any recording.
2) you select the track you are going to NR, and you edit waveform and it takes you to the edit waveform window. Now you are going to give NR a sample of the noise you want to reduce in your track. Because you ALWAYS obey rule #1's tip, you have like 6 seconds of silence at the end of the track. Highlight the biggest portion of the empty track you can. I've had it work with as little as 1/10 of a second sample of silence, but MORE silence is better. Take this highlighted silent portion and select effect--->noise reduction---> NR noise reduction
3) click on the "get profile from selection" button. the computer will analyze the signal-free portion of the track you just fed it. If you want, you can click on preview to hear the now noise free couple seconds with the hiss magically gone. If you want to hear the hiss that got removed, click on "hear only noise". when you are done, put it back the way it was, and click "save profile". You will have to name your FFT file. If i;m working for example with a vocal track, i will call the noise fft sample "vocal.fft" youre not done, but click cancel.
4) now go back to where you started and either highlight the whole track, or dont highlight anything, and go back to the same NR effect you were just at. Either way, youre now feeding the same NR effect the WHOLE TRACK this time.
5) click "load saved sample" and load the NR fft sample you just saved in #3. click preview and prepare to be amazed...you will hear the track totally cleaned of the hiss or whatever noise sample you fed it. If you really wanna be amazed, select "hear only noise" to hear the whole track of noise you are about to remove...only be SURE to turn hear only noise off...very important to turn it back to previewing the cleaned track. Quit previewing the noise, youre done...click done.
6) CEP will now apply the noise reduction to the entire track. youll be amazed at what you can clean out of a track with the NR feature. We were fooling around recording a demo vocal track, and this kid really nailed his vocals. Only problem was, we were there so long we kind of "tuned out" the clothes dryer runnin about ten feet away, and it was clearly recorded in the background, and there were tennis shoes thumping in the dryer...it totally destroyed the killer vocal track he just layed down! we were BUMMED. ANyhoo, i did this #1 thru #5, having previewed like 10 secs of dryer noise at the end of the track, and when it was done NRing the track, you could not hear it no matter how hard you listened! When we listened to "just the noise", it was like listening to a radio commercial for a clothes dryer!
7) BIG TIP: the longer sample of the noise you feed NR, the better job it will do removing the noise from the track.Once fooling around, I highlighted the vocals in a vocal track and fed THAT to the NR just to see what it would do...the track had a barely audible "ghost voice" on it...when i previewed "just the noise" you could hear practically all the vocal track...if this NR feature worked any better you could remove vocals karaoke style!
8) last tip: if youre not a real "TECH DUDE" and thoroughly familiar with digital signal processing and signal to noise ratio's and stuff, i wouldnt go messing with any of the weird options or settings in NR effect. It works best "as is". Just be sure you have several seconds of silent track to feed the NR and it'll clean practically any noise out of the track you feed it for a sample.
TIP: if youre working on someone ELSE's track that didnt have the courtesy to ley you have several seconds of silence (null signal) at the beginning or end of the track, you have to "zoom in" on the waveform and grab as big a chunk of silence as you can. Ive done this with as litle as 1/10 of a seconds worth of null signal inbetween snare drum hits and had good results.
Since NR feature in CEP works SO DAMN GOOD, ive gotten kind of lazy turning off electrical appliances and flourescent lights and stuff. But in truth,the guy who posted bnefore me was right...the best way to avoid noise is not to record it in the first place. But NR will take like 10dB's of recorded cassette tape hiss right the hell out like nobody;s business leaving you with 10dB's more headroom and meter swing...thats cool!
hope this helped you!
