Jump to content

Hey, what's a good denoiser for hum and hiss?


Recommended Posts

  • Moderators

What's the source of the hiss and hum? It's often better to eliminate the source of the noise if possible.

 

Maybe find the frequency range of the noise and try EQ'ing it down. Or use an autogate.

 

I think there's software that works by capturing blank noise and then subtracts it from the overall waveform. But the noise needs to be pretty uniform and constant to be effective.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Moderators

I really like the Waves Restoration bundle. But it ain't cheap.

 

I use it to clean up scratchy distorted and hissed out telephone recordings. It works by you selecting a portion of audio that includes what you want to get rid of. But nothing else. This allows the software to "learn" what you consider noise. You save that snapshot as a preset. Then you mess with playing the file through the plugin and adjusting threshold and amount controls. Amazing stuff.

 

But I understand iZotope RX is great and more than likely, being a new technology, better. Cheaper too.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

 

What's the source of the hiss and hum? It's often better to eliminate the source of the noise if possible.


Maybe find the frequency range of the noise and try EQ'ing it down. Or use an autogate.


I think there's software that works by capturing blank noise and then subtracts it from the overall waveform. But the noise needs to be pretty uniform and constant to be effective.

 

 

You're absolutely right about that. The noise is primarily ambient noise, such as an attic roof fan and other nonsense. Some of it is probably coming from the equipment as well, but I can't seem to track it down, but it's a reasonably quiet hiss...at least until I start doing spoken word recordings in a house. But yes, the sounds are uniform and constant...although the Izotope RX2 software that Lee mentions (which I also hear is great), in their example, removed car beeps!!!!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

The Waves bundle is one of the best noise reducing plugins I've used.

Theres some decent tools in Cool edit for other stuff. I Hve IZotope RX.

I can do allot better with other plugins. Sound Forge editor may have some stock

plugins for cleaning up wave files. Hum is one of the harder things to get rid of because you

wind up eliminating audio content at the same time. Its not just the 60hz, its all the overtones

of the hum as well.

 

When you have noise and its only heard during silence between peaks, then a gate or manually

creating silence with envelopes is the only things that really works.

 

There are some phase cancellation methods that can be partially effective too.

You copy the track and attempt to EQ everything out except the noise. Then reverse

phase the track and play it back with the original. The noise should null itself out. Again

any live content in those frequencies would also null themselves out.

 

You're better off getting a mic thats less sensitive to picking up room noise so you

dont have to deal with it. Even if you have to make your own partial voice booth with

baffels.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

I've also used WaveArts Master Restoration bundle. It has worked well for me. You can demo it for, I believe, 30 days. And for what it does it's not terribly expensive IMO. Looks like it's about half the price of the Waves version.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

Thanks. Still been messing around with the trial version. So far, I can get the hum to disappear more effectively with the denoiser than with the hum module. Strange. At any rate, with a bit of fiddling, this can work quite transparently with hiss and hum so far. I have barely scratched the surface of this program, but I still think the stand-alone version seems more effective than the plugin version.

 

Will check out the WaveArts one soon. Thanks.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

Truthfully I'm incredible impressed with izotope RX for removing noise and hiss without taking to much away from the sound of the source.

 

I'll post an example if I can here soon. I don't have RX 2 and am not sure about doing the upgrade at this point, but the original RX is good.

 

I think it's great for removing amp noise.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

Waves makes pretty darned good stuff across the board IMO, but yes, that bundle tends to be pricey.


I'd really like to try the RX2 at some point - I've heard good things about it. So Ken... the RTAS version has issues?
:(

 

I don't wanna say anything bad about it yet, but unless I'm doing something terribly wrong, the stand-alone version has additional features that the RTAS doesn't have, and seems to offer greater processing, either by showing the anomalies graphically (showing hums as a bar across the bottom, stray sounds such as car beeps as odd swipes across the visual plane, or other things of that nature) and then being able to freehand draw around that and eliminate it or by "learning" the audio and then knocking out the sound, which seems more effective than "learning" in RTAS. To be fair, RTAS does processing in "real time", as far as I can tell, so it may just be that it's a different animal altogether. But personally, I'd probably try and address the audio in the stand-alone version first.

 

Now, do bear in mind that I have not addressed any of this comprehensively, but this is my first impression. And I often catch on to these things reasonably quickly, but this one definitely has a learning curve, particularly if you've never used a denoiser before, which is the case with me.

 

I don't think there's anything wrong with the RTAS version, just that it doesn't have as many features as the stand-alone. Again, I could be wrong. Someone please jump in and correct me if this is not the case.

 

And yesterday, I was fiddling with it and was able to get rid of hum easier with the denoiser than the hum with the RTAS version, and to a certain degree, also with the stand-alone version, although I was also able to get rid of the hum with the DeHummer or whatever it's called. Now, again, this could just be me not using it properly, but that's the results I got. It takes a bit of fiddling, but once you fiddle, you can get rid of a lot of common sounds while hardly altering the "desirable" audio.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

I really didnt spend a huge amount of time using it.

I found the familuraty curve more difficult than other programs.

I have the stand alone/plugin version for PC. It will work either way.

I'd use it more for restorations if I could find some worthwhile functions to it.

Maybe I'll revisit using it and see if theres something there I missed.

I do remember the automatic functions were horrible. The waves bundle in comparison

works like a snap. Even the Cool Edit, which is one of the first programs I've owned

still works like a chanp for me. I havent found any plugin that will effectively remove hum though.

Most just try to EQ it out and thats easy enough to do with an EQ and maybe using a gate.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 weeks later...
  • Members

If you have access to a) a PC, and b) an audio program that still handles DirectX (directly or through a wrapper), I can't recommend this highly enough:

 

http://www.virtos-audio.com/

 

The Noise Wizard bundle is $59, and flat out works. Especially for the hum and noise from guitar pickups, it works a treat without noticeably affecting the desired sound.

 

The DSP guru that created them has kinda put them into ignoreland, and with DirectX disappearing, that's a pain. I do have them working in Cubase 6, albeit wrappered.

 

js

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

 

the sounds are uniform and constant...although the Izotope RX2 software that Lee mentions (which I also hear is great), in their example, removed car beeps!!!!

 

The seatbelt alarm beeping in the example on the Izotope website is soft and sounds like an intermittent single frequency sine wave. Identifying it and filtering it out is not difficult. Not sure how they got rid of the fuzzy distortion from the worn vinyl record in the other example, it is much more subtle.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 weeks later...

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...