Dynamic Noise Gates

[Dave Rose]

I've been doing some restoration work on speech recently and there is a lot of sound from the camera guy moving around and rustling his clothes...most notable in the higher frequencies. Whilst spectral repair can be effective (I'm using RX advanced) I wondered whether there was a kind of dynamic gate, which only lets certain frequencies through once they hit a certain level. This way I could preserve the T's and S's but dim this high frequency rustling through most of the speech. Or, better still, does anyone know of a dynamic EQ which has a 'top' and a bottom threshold setting, meaning you could set it to attenuate frequencies over a certain level, but also to bypass itself after another threshold, (although I'm not sure how this would work for without dipping the beginning of the T's and S's, unless you had the option of changing the pre attack time of the louder transients which cause it to bypass any gain reduction, which obviously wouldn't work in realtime.)

Anyway I'm relatively new to restoration, so your help and advice would be much appreciated!

[tribeofenki]

Sonalksis CQ1 is a multi-band dynamics processor, allowing four freely adjustable filter bands.

[dave-G]

In hardware, the type of noise reduction you're describing is available in the now-extinct Dolby 740. It has a single-ended sliding-band noise reduction feature that I've only ever used a few times, but to good effect. Though it might work better on steady-state noise than on the kind of occasional stuff you're describing, it might still work well for you. The box's primary features as a dynamic EQ/"spectral processor" are pretty nice too.

If you're in LA or NY, you might be able to find one to rent locally.

-dave

[Dave Rose]

Unfortunately I live in Leeds UK, where the closest thing to renting pro audio equipment would be borrowing your mates ipod. The sonalksis looks like it could do a pretty good job though.....have you had decent results from it? Anyone else had experience using it?

[tribeofenki]

Sonalksis did great plugs...
and they are still growing !!

[MASSIVE Master]

The only reason I ended up buying UAD's Precision Maul-The-Band compressor is that it made one of the best frequency-conscious expanders I've ever used.