Nasty hiss

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ken ashby

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I have imported a very old track from a reel to reel player into pro tools 9. There is a constant background hiss which has to be edited out, any suggestions please?
 
If you have the technical skills (or can find somebody to help out) you might get a fair bit of improvement by adjusting the playback parameters on the reel to reel--both head alignment and the playback bias. Even if the playback machine is adjusted to the right spec, if the record machine was off you may need to optimise for that particular tape.
 
It was a live gig we played in a pub 'way back in 1984, just want to tidy it up for a keepsake.
 
There should filters and stuff in PT that you can use. They will tend to kill your top end though...

Alternatively other sound editors, even ones as basic as Audacity, will have noise reduction algorithms you can use. If it's just a tidy up, they might be good enough.
 
Hand it over to someone here with iZotope RX Advanced to remove the hiss. I would have suggested you do it, but iZotope RX Advanced is hellishly expensive for a one-off. Brilliant software but expensive for that reason
 
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The noise reduction in Adobe Audition is also darn good--and, since your need is a one off, you could almost certainly do all you need during their one month free trial.

Just saying....
 
Bobbsy said:
The noise reduction in Adobe Audition is also darn good--and, since your need is a one off, you could almost certainly do all you need during their one month free trial.

Just saying....
Click to expand...

Good suggestion Bobbsy, but do you find that noise reduction kills everything across the board? I have used iZotope to remove hiss and record crackle with amazing results. It takes a profile of just the noise and targets that. Doesn't seem to touch anything else in the process
 
GuitarLegend said:
Good suggestion Bobbsy, but do you find that noise reduction kills everything across the board? I have used iZotope to remove hiss and record crackle with amazing results. It takes a profile of just the noise and targets that. Doesn't seem to touch anything else in the process
Click to expand...

Well, Izotope RX Advanced is more effective...but, just for the restoration tools, costs about 4 times as much as the whole Audition package. Even better than Izotope is the stuff you can get from Cedar...but you can drop as much as a small car if you go for the top of that line!

However, with a bit of "driving" you can get almost the same results in Audition. The theory is the same--you take a noise sample than apply that to the whole file. I find that simply leaving it on automatic can degrade your audio files...but by tinkering with the FFT size and, more important, doing light noise reduction several times (with an updated sample each time) I can remove pretty extreme noise without any audible artefacts on the audio. Since the trial period is free, it's worth a play for the OP I think.

(Or, if it's a short enough file to post somewhere, I could have a go for him I suppose.)
 
I had a Behringer DeNoiser ( yeah, yeah, yeah) around that I just recently sold, just for this purpose. Actually, I think this was one of Behringer's best products..It works really well for the purpose you are describing...It's single ended so it works in real time and don't need decoding.. If you find one laying around, grab it..!
 
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