advice needed from noise reduction and restauration experts

[GoldenEars]

Hi everybody,

I put this question into the mastering forum although it is not about mastering per se but I thought here i have the best chance to get to the experts in noise reduction and restautation.

A friend of mine recorded video and audio for a documentary about a conductor holding a workshop. It turned out that there had been something wrong with the lavallier mic the conductor was wearing and therefore there's a annoying pulsating noise on all the tracks recorded of him. (Luckily the room mic tracks are OK).

My friend knows about my occupation with audio and asked my if I knew a solution. I tried with the tools I have at hand (Sony Noise Reduction and Adobe Audition) but failed to get satisfactory results. I have a recording of the pure noise alone and tried to align it phase inverted to the recordings to cancel it out but although there is a periodicity in the noise as one can see from the waveform it is irregular enough to make this approach impossible.

Now I'm helpless.

I have uploaded a zipped folder with the noise alone and examples of the conductor talking with and without orchestra and whistling melodies. They are at the original level and unedited except for being cut out of the original recordings which are unfortunately done at 16 bits.

http://download.yousendit.com/911DB0F94252E1BC

How would you approach this problem?

What would be your weapon(s) of choice to get rid of the noise with the least possible artifacts?

Greetings from Munich, Germany

Joerg

[Masterer]

Originally Posted by GoldenEars

Hi everybody,

I put this question into the mastering forum although it is not about mastering per se but I thought here i have the best chance to get to the experts in noise reduction and restautation.

A friend of mine recorded video and audio for a documentary about a conductor holding a workshop. It turned out that there had been something wrong with the lavallier mic the conductor was wearing and therefore there's a annoying pulsating noise on all the tracks recorded of him. (Luckily the room mic tracks are OK).

My friend knows about my occupation with audio and asked my if I knew a solution. I tried with the tools I have at hand (Sony Noise Reduction and Adobe Audition) but failed to get satisfactory results. I have a recording of the pure noise alone and tried to align it phase inverted to the recordings to cancel it out but although there is a periodicity in the noise as one can see from the waveform it is irregular enough to make this approach impossible.

Now I'm helpless.

I have uploaded a zipped folder with the noise alone and examples of the conductor talking with and without orchestra and whistling melodies. They are at the original level and unedited except for being cut out of the original recordings which are unfortunately done at 16 bits.

http://download.yousendit.com/911DB0F94252E1BC

How would you approach this problem?

What would be your weapon(s) of choice to get rid of the noise with the least possible artifacts?

Greetings from Munich, Germany

Joerg

Sountrack Pro has some interesting noise reduction tools. I don't know how they compare to Audition etc, but if you have the recent upgrade for Logic 8 you already have it and you can give it a shot [find a spot with noise only in the file and use the "process" menu to select Set Noise Print. Then select Remove Noise to bring up the Remove Noise HUD. Then just mess around with that for a while until despair and resignation set in and you're done.

Good luck bro.

[Whitecat]

Have a listen to this, let me know if you think it's an improvement.

music and talking new.zip

[GoldenEars]

@ Masterer: thanks for your reply and your proposal. My friend has the latest version of soundtrack pro included in final cut, so I'll give that a try, although the problem with the noise is that it is not of static nature as for example tape noise but pulsating. As you can hear in the examples it sounds like somebody would listen to loud techno music (nothing against techno from my side but not in the context of a classical workshop!) next door or on the next floor while the conductor teaches. I tried the noiseprint method already with Sony Noise Reduction and Adobe Audition but without satisfactory results as stated above. Maybe the tools in Soundtrack Pro work better than what I have.

@ terminal3: Thanks for the reply and the try you gave the problem. That is definitely an impovement. The "beats" are still there but have become much quieter. How did you do that?

any further suggestions anybody?

My consideration so far is to try to a combination of noise print and something like click/pop removal maybe combined with lopass filtering.

in what order would you use these effects?

Greetings, Jörg

[Sunbreak Music]

You can take it out (w/ minimal effect on the intended audio) w/ a spectral editor. I just popped it in and made a quick pass and took it out.

My server is being worked on so I can't upload the file, but if you email me through my site I can send you an example of what I'm talking about. Problem is that the editors are expensive, but I think there's a demo of Izotope RX available that you should check out.

There aren't any miracles, but I don't think you'll have much success to speak of w/ a broadband reduction in this case. But I've never felt they were much better than the noise.

Cass

[mawd]

Originally Posted by GoldenEars

Hi everybody,

I put this question into the mastering forum although it is not about mastering per se but I thought here i have the best chance to get to the experts in noise reduction and restautation.

A friend of mine recorded video and audio for a documentary about a conductor holding a workshop. It turned out that there had been something wrong with the lavallier mic the conductor was wearing and therefore there's a annoying pulsating noise on all the tracks recorded of him. (Luckily the room mic tracks are OK).

My friend knows about my occupation with audio and asked my if I knew a solution. I tried with the tools I have at hand (Sony Noise Reduction and Adobe Audition) but failed to get satisfactory results. I have a recording of the pure noise alone and tried to align it phase inverted to the recordings to cancel it out but although there is a periodicity in the noise as one can see from the waveform it is irregular enough to make this approach impossible.

Now I'm helpless.

I have uploaded a zipped folder with the noise alone and examples of the conductor talking with and without orchestra and whistling melodies. They are at the original level and unedited except for being cut out of the original recordings which are unfortunately done at 16 bits.

YouSendIt - Send large files - transfer delivery - FTP Replacement

How would you approach this problem?

What would be your weapon(s) of choice to get rid of the noise with the least possible artifacts?

Greetings from Munich, Germany

Joerg

Hi...I do the transferring of Vinyl records to Cd and I encounter noise problems everyday. Here's a Before + After of an Intro that I restored recently. My main weapons were Soundforge + Pristine Sounds 2000.
I swear by PS 2000...the Soundforge Plug Ins come in handy also...

http://members.ozemail.com.au/~mawd/No_Noise.mp3
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~mawd/With_Noise.mp3

I'm downloading your file now as we speak...I'll check it out and get back to you.
regards......MAWD

[e-cue]

My modest attempt at the "Music and talking"... Spent more time downloading than restoring it and bouncing it to MP3... Lemme know what you think, the good and the bad, and I'll post my method...

[ed littman]

While were all at it.....here's mine
Ed

[bcgood]

Originally Posted by ed littman

While were all at it.....here's mine
Ed

Your good...

[Sunbreak Music]

Originally Posted by ed littman

While were all at it.....here's mine
Ed

Yours sounds like mine Which brand?

[diatonic]

...

[Whitecat]

Originally Posted by diatonic

I don't think phase inversion will work but training on "mic noise.wav" gives a good signature for a denoiser. Using Izotope RX's Denoiser demo the results were significant, first training on "mic noise.wav", then applying it to the other parts.

that's exactly what I did on the sample I posted. -12db of reduction, could possibly go further with it too.

[diatonic]

...

[GoldenEars]

Thanks to you all for your replies.

I downloaded all the mp3s posted today and will report tomorrow.

I also downloaded demos of Pristine Sound and izotope RX and will try to mess with that myself.

It's great to have a forum like gearslutz with so many people willing to share knowledge.

greetings joerg

[Whitecat]

Originally Posted by diatonic

@terminal3, I haven't figured if the hammer is meant to be a good or bad thing yet. More aggressive settings do pull it out but also yank some of the low end spectrum from the instruments and vocals. There is an advanced tab for the denoiser that also gives more control.

I have no idea, I think I've used the hammer in both contexts.

yes, I settled on -12 because I felt it was the best balance between reducing the problem and not compromising the music, but it might be a matter of taste.

I used algorithm C of course.

[diatonic]

...