Improving my A/C noise reduction game

[AshenElm]

Here's a file from last summer. As is generally the case, it is from across the street. I had neglected doing much with this file because 3/4 of the sexy time was drowned out by the loud buzz of an air-conditioner. I've been playing with my technique, and have at least gotten to the point where you can hear moans, giggles and a few more noisy sounds over the A/C.

However, at some point part way through their session, they turn the unit completely off, and chat quietly, and then finish with the clear sound of their bodies smacking together, sighs (not her normal screams) and thumping of a dresser rocking. It 100% sounds like they come together in the end. It's hot stuff!

There are moans, giggles and noise through the first 5 minutes, then not a whole until around the 14 minute mark, where the A/C goes off. Then there is some whispers, some of that intimate glow between a loving couple, and eventually they have sex (round 2?) to finish the file.

Enjoy, and if anyone wants to talk specifics on sound editing, I'd be happy to. Audacity user exclusively (though I have a very old history with Cool Edit, for those who have been around the internet for a minute.)

across_the_street_19.mp3

[LazyHoneyDaughter]

Had a go at treating this audio (that buzz was killing me, lol):

across_the_street_19-TREATED.mp3

[AshenElm]

Had a go at treating this audio (that buzz was killing me, lol):
across_the_street_19-TREATED.mp3

Oh yeah, it's not perfect. I shot for a compromise between losing sound and reducing the buzz. Do you want the .wav to play with? I'm happy to provide the raws. And sharing any tips and whatnot will be most helpful. Going to listen to your remix now though!

[LazyHoneyDaughter]

Had a go at treating this audio (that buzz was killing me, lol):
across_the_street_19-TREATED.mp3

Oh yeah, it's not perfect. I shot for a compromise between losing sound and reducing the buzz. Do you want the .wav to play with? I'm happy to provide the raws. And sharing any tips and whatnot will be most helpful. Going to listen to your remix now though!

The original WAV would be awesome!

I'm always playing with that compromise of notching out frequencies to remove bits I don't like, and that removing those frequencies tends to dull / destroy some of the sounds I'm trying to hear (I'm never sure if what I'm doing is making the audio better or worse / I 'reworked' your MP3 twice, as the first time I realized I had made it a LOT worse / ears get tired).

After I've gone through the original WAV, I'll detail the steps I took -- if you have any questions, please feel free to ask (not that I really know what I'm doing, lol).

[AshenElm]

I love the "notching" you seemed to do with EQ (I assume) to knock out the buzz. I'll try to get relevant bits of the file up tomorrow if I get a chance. I have a few more files of these two vs their AC unit to share.

[AshenElm]

Here's the raw wav file. I left a little more on each side of the file.

To take it from this raw, to the product I posted above, I ran a low pass filter, then a high-pass filter. I used a reductive noise reductions based on a bit of the "a/c unit only" part of the file. Then I hit the file as a whole with a couple of rounds of limiter, then amplify. The clean section I only did a light high pass filter.

across_the_street_19{raw}.wav

[edtraveller]

Still a raw fan. Love the original recording

[digginurscene86]

Still a raw fan. Love the original recording

Agreed. Raw is the reason we listen in the first place. When people "clean up" files, it takes away the authenticity.

[bcn4]

Hey there! Haven't posted anything at all yet, but came across this audio topic and thought I could give a tip.
Having a background in music and audio I would suggest using Reaper as a DAW, get Fabfilter (pro-Q3) somewhere and use Reaper's built-in ReaFir plug-in to taste. Great setup for these purposes, once you learn how to really use it. Still you can keep things sound natural but just enhanced a bit

[LazyHoneyDaughter]

This is one of those times when I'm not sure if I've made it worse, but I'll post what I've got after some tinkering with the original WAV file:

across_the_street_19{raw}-TREATED.mp3

I don't use Audacity (I'm so used to 'DCForensics 10' / 'GoldWave' that working in other apps feels off). However, these techiniques will work in Audacity / most other sound editors. I'm self-taught, so these are my own theories and terms / could be completely wrong about it all

Firstly, I spend most of my time in the spectrogram view so that I can see all the issue frequencies with the audio (took me a minute to find Audacity's spectrogram, but it does have one / it's quirky though does its job ).

The highlight of this treatment, for me, is that I mostly murdered that horrible AC unit
(I tried to the use 'spoiler' tag, but it didn't work)

These are the steps taken to do what's been done:
I treated the file in three sections (AC on, AC off, AC on), and nothing was deleted (I don't think).

• Notch filter. The AC unit caused a huge amount of mechanical noise and untold numbers of harmonics, so I used a notch filter on around 33 frequency bands to cut away the sound (this, of course, dulled the sound a lot). Most times, 'notching' is just me looking at the spectrogram and deciding 'that' frequency line shouldn't be there, and then using the notch filter to attenuate it. Trial and error, mostly, though you start seeing patterns after a while. (you could also use a bandstop / parametric EQ filter to cut away frequency bands)

• EQ. With most audio of this nature, there is rumble or power line noise (and associated harmonics), so I just use an EQ to silence everything under ~125Hz. Yes, you will lose 'warmth' in the recording, but it clears frequency space, lowers volume, and gets rid of annoying low frequency stuff.

• Bandstop / Brickwall filter. There were frequency bands that did nothing except hiss (okay, they added some 'life' to the sound as well, but they got in the way). A bandstop / brickwall filter cleared out around six problem areas (I always use the least amount of 'length' possible to just slightly reduce the volume in that band). A great deal of all of this is just slightly, slightly reduce frequencies to let others shine through.

• Continuous Noise Filter. I try to use noise filters as little as possible as they introduce warbling artifacts, but after clearing most of the annoying AC frequencies, we're still left with a good chunk of white noise from the AC. So, I sampled a section of noise and then gently removed as much of the white noise as I thought I could get away with, saving this to a new file, and then imported both into Audacity (you can definitely hear the noise filter warbling). There the files were blended (DC doesn't have a way of controlling the amount of 'wet'/'dry' a filter imparts on the audio). The hybrid sound was transferred back into DC.

• Gain filter. There were a few instances where we have loud 'impulse' sounds (bangs, slaps, even kisses), and these cause volume spikes which gets in the way of me normalizing the audio to get an even'ish volume. I went through and attenuated a handful of these spikes by anything from 1 to 5 dB, and then normalized the volume to get it as loud as possible without causing clipping.

• Spectral Exciter/Expander filter. This just adds a little life back into the sound / adds some white noise / not entirely sure how this works, but it sounds slightly better using it. This was only used on the AC Off area, as we already have enough noise to play with elsewhere.

• Normalize Volume filter. Almost all the time, I want the audio output to be as loud as possible (without clipping), so that's used generally at the end of the treatment (though not always).

• And lastly, the volume was shaped throughout to get things into a better condition / bring up the quiet AC Off area.

Thanks for letting me play with the original recording!

[AshenElm]

Still a raw fan. Love the original recording

Agreed. Raw is the reason we listen in the first place. When people "clean up" files, it takes away the authenticity.

I certainly agree there are times where people over work their stuff and it ends up very flat. I certainly wouldn't feel the need to remove birds, insect sounds it what have you. But do you really prefer the A/C noise at full blast?

My goal is always to make the sounds of the couple stand it a little more. My gauge is if there is conversation, being closer to being able to understand the words.