Sound editing

[cavguy67]

Is there anything I could do to an outdoor file? Trying to get rid of or soften some white noise, cars, crickets, cicadas.

[reggind]

Funny you should ask! I had some luck last night cutting down cricket and cicada noises in the new outdoor files in the form. It worked pretty well. I suspect it left artifacts, but the speech in the file was not wickedly clear anyway, and it did not seem to effect the moaning much...

So, here is what I did in Audacity...

Load up the file

Cut out any stuff that is superfluous and way louder than anything of real interest. This is normally the mic drop noise at the start of the file and mic pickup noises at the end. If you look at the histogram of the file you will see the big spikes I am taking about. Remove them.

Go into the effects drop down and find "amplify" and select it. Make sure "allow clipping" is not selected and bring the gain up bit by bit until it is as high as you can make it but the "OK" button is still lit up. Click OK at that point. Let the amplify filter do it's thing.

Now look at the histogram. You should see ever regular bursts of activity. Select from a bit before one of them to a bit after one of them by holding down the mouse button and scrolling it.

Click on the "View" menu and select "Zoom to Selection" The histogram should show one burst with some small stuff on both sides of it.

Select the burst out of the now zoomed view as best as you can. You can hit the play button to listen to what you have selected. It should be just one chirp with as little before or after it as possible.

Click on the effect drop down and select "Noise Reduction" and click on get noise profile.

Now click on the "view" dropdown and click on "Fit in Window". You should now have the entire file back in the histogram window. Make sure that NOTHING is highlighted, or that EVERYTHING is highlighted. You want to act on the entire file.

Click on the "effect" dropdown and select "Noise Reduction" These are the parameters that I use. You can try the defaults, and you can try being more aggressive. I personally hate the way the noise reduction filter sounds so I use it as sparingly as possible. My settings are:

Noise reduction db, I try 9 normally but 12 did not sound bad in this one case..
Sensitivity I have set to 15
Frequency Smoothing Bands I have maxed out at 48
and the radio button for "Reduce" is clicked.

Click OK and let the noise reduction do it's magic.

The file will be a lot louder because we amplified it (It is near impossible to tell the chirps in the raw histogram) but the chirps are reduced by quite a bit. They are still clearly there, but much reduced.

After this you could try finding some noise between chirps and using that as the noise profile and trying to do noise reduction with that to cut some of the static and white noise, but I think that might be pressing it and the file will start to sound really bad.

As usual, the question of are you playing with the file so you can pick things out or to make it sound better. They are not mutually exclusive, and I tend to do both. I enjoy picking the little whispers, gasps and moans out, but I also like a file I can just kick back and listen to and enjoy...

Let me know how this works for you...

[AdamMK0147]

will that work also for " White Noise " to clear up the Audio because I'm having trouble trying to clear up an MP3 with white noise in the background from the Mic and each time I try and make it sound better it just comes out worse and I've tried reducing the sound to speeding down the sound which there are small little moanings and bed squeaks here and there but I can never seem to pick up that sound no matter how much I try and get the sound better so I need advice on how to remove the white noise from the Mic in the Background in the Audio but I will try this Method tonight.

[reggind]

The noise reduction can get rid of a little bit of the white noise before it starts to make the file sound funny. You can always use control z to undo the last stab at noise reduction and try again with more or less aggressive settings. Your ears also may not be as sensitive to the artifacts from the noise reduction. Different people have different tastes.

[emmpet8]

If you have access to Audition the "Adaptive Noise Reduction" option in "Spectral Frequency Display" can be pretty good at getting rid of, or reducing sounds like cicadas.

As for white noise the "Noise Reduction Process" is pretty good if you use the advanced settings that are available. The metallic/funny sounds that used to be a negative factor of the process are now much reduced.

There are some helpful tutorials on YouTube for all these processes. I am aware that Audition CC isn't cheap, but there are ways of reducing costs legally.

[shulrab]

Izoptope Elements is on sale now (27.08.2017) at $29 (reduced from $129). It is very good sound editing software, with a free 30 day trial. You can try out their advanced versions (RX), too.

[stleroticity]

Audacity is pretty good. My steps that I do, is that I normally sample the noise filter, and then select the whole file and apply noise reduction using that sample. you can do the same for large spikes of noises but apply the noise filtering directly on that same selection.

Next I do Low Pass Filter & set it for 165 Hz and then a high pass filter 255. This range is supposed to be the "known" range for female voices. If need be, then do the amplification. Has been pretty good results for me when I listen to sounds from this board.

[tweaktweak]

Wait, Low pass all the way down to 165hz?

[stleroticity]

Yep, seems to help make the audio more focused for that voice range

[reggind]

First off, the high pass gets rid of low frequencies. You set it to a low frequency and it lets everything above that frequency through.

The low pass is the one that cuts high frequencies, You set it to a high frequency and it lets everything under that through.

You can high pass down to probably 50 or so and get rid of a lot of rumble. I like things a bit bigger than a multiple of 60 as in the US the power line frequency is 60Hz and a lot of things that run off of 60Hz are at least semi synchronous with it, so 240 should have anything at 60 waaaay down with a 48db/octave slope, and also knock out the first few harmonics of it, as well as all the rumble from people stomping around and cars and low frequency noise from AC's etc. Even things like fridges and AC's often "hum" at 60 Hz.

The low pass is a bit more dubious for a few reasons. First, there is usually not the big surges of energy in the higher frequencies that there are in the lower ones. Also your ears play some nasty tricks on you, and even if there is no actual intelligence in the higher frequencies, cutting them makes the recording sound more muted. I do often times use a low pass, but that tends to be more occasionally.

I also try and do as much clean up with the filters as I can before resorting to noise reduction.

[stev4181]

My word, I didn't realise there was so much effort put into the captures that you guys post. Thank you for your time and effort. I would be happy with a very simple program where I could cut out the 10 minute capture I may have from a 6 hour recording from a planted usb. What's the best free program for this simple task guys? Many thanks in advance

[reggind]

Audicity will let you snip the good part out of a long capture, and it is free, and there is a lot more you can grow into.

http://www.audacityteam.org/download/

[stev4181]

Thanks reggind, one of the reasons I have never posted is because any captures are a 10 minute session on a 10 hour recording. Even the most avid listener doesn't want to hear all that rubbish. Many thanks

[physicist]

Thanks reggind, one of the reasons I have never posted is because any captures are a 10 minute session on a 10 hour recording. Even the most avid listener doesn't want to hear all that rubbish. Many thanks

Well, I'm sure you might have already gathered that by now, given that many members here explicitly state they get there captures through planted USBs. Planted obviously means there could be something so better to leave a USB behind then edit it.

What gives? Wonder how come you missed it?

[stev4181]

Physicist, you are right about planting USBs. However, for me at least, these are a relitivly new tool. In the good old days it was my phone, and even that only recorded a minute at a time. So not only did you have to be in exactly the right place at the right time(no mean feat) but also had to be very quick with saving and naming files, whist trying not to get caught. I downloaded audacity today and have managed to teach myself( via you tube) how to edit recordings. My next step is how to save the files, for some reason it won't let me do it, but I shall persevere.