A couple of things that might be of use

[emmpet8]

This is a note about a handy little feature I discovered in Adobe Audition NR and it might also be in other editors. I’ve also described how I personally use an equaliser in a simple way to try and improve the listening experience.

Most of the stuff I've been doing with sound over the last few years is related to video editing, so hardly ever involved noise reduction and stuff like that. For this reason I haven’t really explored the features available. The other day I was looking for old material and playing with the noise reduction. While doing so I discovered an 'Output Only' box you can tick, which I found really handy, as it easily lets you check what is being removed by the NR. It allows you to do this in either of two ways.

The first is to choose a setting and press play in the NR effect and it will play you what will be lost if you use that setting. When you change settings to try another value though, you have to check the 'Output Only' box again.

The second way of using it is to press apply for an effect while the 'Output Only' box is checked and that will leave what is being removed from the bit you have highlighted. You can then check critical parts to see if any important sounds are being removed. After that you can use Edit/Undo to remove the effect. I tried it for some different settings in hiss and hum. It was amazing how much was being lost with some settings and particularly so in hiss.

While I was messing about I also played with the 30 band equaliser to try and improve things. In my opinion we tend to focus on the hiss, but I find that removing the lowest frequencies causes no loss of critical sound and improves the listening a lot.

I created a number of presets along these lines. I choose a frequency I think I might need (in the preset I'm using as an example it's 200Hz). I leave that frequency at 0dB and all the higher frequencies above it at the same.

In this particular preset I then went back three steps from my chosen frequency (200Hz), so in this case to 100Hz and reduced that frequency to zero. I then reduced all the lower frequencies (31 – 80Hz) to zero as well.

I then did a simple line with the two frequencies in between 100 and 200Hz. Something like 125 Hz at -15dB and 160 at -10dB.

I find this reduces a lot of hum and the dull background sounds. You obviously need to play around to find the best settings for each clip, but it seems to work for me. If you have any tips or hints I’d love to hear them.