Noise VST Plugin / EQ?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Spikeh
  • Start date Start date
Spikeh said:
Haha, it's 7 hours of recording... bearing in mind 1h of it is a re-recording of some sections, and taking in to account the mistakes that are made + discussions about script changes etc (I don't stop the recording, no point at that level), it adds up pretty fast! The end result is about 5h of material. It's about a 3GB file at 44KHz (another mistake I made - should have recorded it at at least 48KHz and dithered it down).

They're training CDs on finance, taxation, trusts, inheritance, wills, legalities etc... I'm learning a lot about the law at the same time, but it gets boring, and it's hard work... sitting there for 7 hours recording, marking mistakes on a script, then spending 10 or so hours mixing it in, removing mistakes (removing hiss ;P) etc. At least it's a decent amount of money ;P

All the editing is done now, just waiting for him to come back with any mistakes I've missed, errors, blips, timing issues etc... I offered to listen back to it in full myself and get rid of all the mistakes (I merely went straight to the mistake points I'd written down and edited them out, so I may have missed some during the recording), but he's happy to do that himself. Either way is good for me ;P

Not mastered it yet... I'll do that once I've got rid of all the mistakes etc and he's happy with it. Also have to do some copying + pasting for the final module (all the key points condensed).

Any suggestions on the mastering chain? This is what I'm thinking:

Waves XNoise -> Waves C1 Gate -> Waves Parametric EQ (10 band) -> Waves C4 Compressor -> L2 UltraMaximiser (or one of the limiters on there at least).

Also... what level should I normlise the track to? I would imaging if I normalised it to 0Db (or -0.03Db like I do normally) it would be too loud for general home / car use?
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Sounds like a pretty boring job but if the money is good then its all good. :)
I'd make the audio around the same volume as a commercial music CD. Probably from around -11dB RMS to -9dB RMS.

You mean mixing rather than mastering don't you?
The mastering process would be the limiting and dithering for this situation pretty much.

Your signal chain seems fine although I'd stick the compressor at the start of the chain, and I'd use C1 compressor with the "speech" setting as a starting point. C1 can really thicken up a vocal and add nice warmth.

Id go C1 - gate - EQ - NR - L2

Id be conservative on the compression though as you don't want to bring out much more room noise.

Eck
 
masteringhouse said:
Another thing that I would suggest is background music to cover-up the noise, and to make 7 hours of someone talking a bit more interesting. I'm sure that there are a few Metal artists here that can donate something appropriate to this material. :)
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Yeah some background music is a good idea.
If your in a band put some of your own music in, its free advertising. :D
Although keep the background music pretty low.

Eck
 
Haha, I thought of that myself... now, my band's music would NOT be appropriate for it... all our lyrics are basically "f*ck the system" ;P And seeing as though this CD is an advocate of "the system", I don't think it'd be appropriate. Not to mention I have nothing solidly recorded / mixed yet, I've only just got the studio ;P

I am considering putting the intro / outro music on the mix though. It may help a little. I'll fiddle about, but I'm not sure if the client would be happy with that at all.

I did notice that when I added compression, the background noise was amplified. However, most of the background noise has been re-recorded out anyway, but I know there's still going to be something there :(
 
IME, every restoration job is going to be different, so to specifically state a one-size-fits-all recipe is hard. But here's a basic plan to start with, making modifications to it as dictated by the material.

1. Do it in several passes, rather than one long processing chain in one pass. Modify what may or may not need to be done in each pass based upon the rsults of the last pass. Do not be afraid to go back and undo the last pass if it winds up taking you down a dead end alley.

2. First try some dynamic range expansion to see if you can put some extra distance between the signal and the noise by oushing thevolume of the noise down. If the background noise is too loud, this may not work very well, but if it's fairly quiet, it can help the following stages quite a bit.

3. Then take a spectral analysis of the longest segment of the resulting noise that you can. Look to see if there are any obvious harmonic series peaks showing up in the noise fingerprint. If so, try knocking down the series by running a harmonic filter, or if you don't have a harmonic filter, a series of narrow Q parametric EQ cuts on the entire recording. Doing this can help reduce bad effects that a fingerprinting NR algorithm like X-noise or Sony's NR can have on the good part of the recording, depending upon the nature of the background noise.

4. After filtering harmonics, take a noise print of the remaining noise in Waves X-noise or Sony's NR plug. Don't actually run the NR yet. Take a couple of different samples of varying lengths from, say, 1/2 second to 3 seconds (or thereabouts). Depending upon the nature of the noise, sometimes a large sample can wind up removing too much of the signal when you run the NR, other tiems too small of a sample won't remove enough noise.

5. Now gate the noise out of the in-between parts of the recording. Leave feathering (attack/release times) off, if your gate offers it. Leave the hard transitions in there for now.

6. After gating, run the NR on the remaining signal, choosing the sample noiseprint that gives you the most NR with the least signal damage.

7. Finally, using automation, throw some fast but natural-sounding fades in and out at the butt joints where the gating turned on and off.

G.
 
Give the client their money back and go home and cry? :P

Thanks for all the advice :)
 
Spoke to the client last night - there's only a few little bits I've missed, and he sounds extremely happy. When I mentioned that I needed to remove the hiss, he said "what hiss?!". So it's not THAT much of an issue, but I'm still gonna reduce it.
 
Spikeh said:
Give the client their money back and go home and cry? :P

Thanks for all the advice :)
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I don't mean to be coming down on you too hard here. Well, yea, maybe I do. :D But seriously, you need to get some more experience and training with this stuff before you go around pretending to be a pro. You're not there yet. Sadly, people seem to be of the mindset that you can just get a bunch of equipment, hang a sign up and say you're open for business.

Don't be "that guy."

.
 
Daisy said:
I don't mean to be coming down on you too hard here. Well, yea, maybe I do. :D But seriously, you need to get some more experience and training with this stuff before you go around pretending to be a pro. You're not there yet. Sadly, people seem to be of the mindset that you can just get a bunch of equipment, hang a sign up and say you're open for business.

Don't be "that guy."

.
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Erm, doesn't everyone start somewhere? I have a few years experience with recording at home etc... how else am I supposed to learn these things? Are you saying I should shut the studio down and... go learn it at college or go work in a studio before I'm worthy of owning my own?

Nothing else in my life has worked that way - I learnt how to program by myself (my day job) and I now earn a packet working for people around the country on various applications, web apps etc... are you saying I should have not taken all the chances I took getting that where I am, and learnt it all in college?

Besides, this client is a "leftover" client from the previous owner, who, incidentally, took over the studio originally with nowhere near the experience I have. I haven't yet advertised for clients, and I don't intend to until I've at least produced a full album (we commence recording of my band's album next week). I'm giving most things away for free at the moment, to get experience.

Just for the record, I intend to do some kind of night course to learn more theory for this. I have a massive passion for this studio to work and I intend to spend a lot of time and money getting it going. I also intend to eventually buy somewhere that I can properly acoustically seal + treat, make vocal and drum booths, and decent control room... I'm always trying to better myself.

You're obviously a pro, do what do you suggest I do to become like you? When will I be worthy of the status "pro"? When I know everything and don't have to ask stupid questions like this?

</rant>
 
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Oh, and on a positive point, I've got rid of the hiss now without too much vocal degredation. I'll be mastering the exports today and getting them ready for a final shipping.

Thanks very much for everyone's help, sometimes it's just good to know you're already going down the right route, but just need to persevere :)
 
It sounds like he's happy with it. And you seem to be happier now as well.

I may have spoken a little too soon. My advice, though, would be to get to know how to use stuff like X-noise. If that's something that you have access to ... then sit down with it and wrap your head around it.

If you get comfortable enough with that plugin (take snippets of the background noise you want to reduce, and have x-noise "learn" it ... then save it as a preset, and then apply it to your whole track), then I promise I won't give you any more shit. :D

Good luck.
 
You can export a 16 44 wave file & open it into Waverepair, select and sample the noise at a variety of sensitivity levels & apply noise reduction again at a variety of sensitivity levels with UNDO. You can also, in undo, do a flip on the process of a part of the track so that all that remains - temporarily - is the noise you'll be removing so that you can assess whether or not you've selected the noise section poorly or applied the reduction too heavily.
& add the noise "fingerprint" to a bank of them over time...
Works a treat BUT there is the conversion issue to deal with.
 
Well, it's now off to the publishers... I used Waves X-Noise and a bit of EQ in the end. Not perfect, but he's more than happy with what I've done. Added a bit of reverb to it as well, which helped with the noise reduction.

Thanks again :) I'll have more questions soon no doubt ;P
 
Hi all.
I've being trying about reducing noise by the following process:
1- Duplicate the noisy track
2- Compress and EQ the new one to bring up the noise as much as possible
3- Change the new track phase
4- "Solo" the original track and the duplicated track and bring the duplicated one's volume completely down.
4- Bring the volume slowly up and analyze what's happening with the noise. Luckily the noise should be reduced at some point while moving the volume slider up.

I've given this process a try but not dedicated to much time but looks a good starting point. What do you think?

Thanks,
Alex.
 
AlexG said:
Hi all.
I've being trying about reducing noise by the following process:
1- Duplicate the noisy track
2- Compress and EQ the new one to bring up the noise as much as possible
3- Change the new track phase
4- "Solo" the original track and the duplicated track and bring the duplicated one's volume completely down.
4- Bring the volume slowly up and analyze what's happening with the noise. Luckily the noise should be reduced at some point while moving the volume slider up.

I've given this process a try but not dedicated to much time but looks a good starting point. What do you think?

Thanks,
Alex.
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Why is so much noise being recorded in the first place? That's a lot of work to get rid of something that shouldn't be there in the first place.


(....and this is a 3 year old thread, but that's OK)
 
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