Anyone really good at cleaning audio

[Steven Davis]

I have an interview and there are some computer fans (which would could not unplug.) I've hacked at it for a couple of days now and without making the voice sound like a chipmunk, that fan noise has widdled me down to a twig.

I can't attach here, but if anyone would give me a helping hand, I can dump a 10 second wave online or something.

Thanks in advance.

[Greg Miller]

I'll be glad to give it a try, but you'll have to post a sample somewhere for me to play with. Then if you're satisfied with the result, we can figure out how to deal with the entire file.

If it's an interview, with just one actual audio track, post a mono file, as that will give you twice as much time for a given file size. (Of course if it is really stereo, with two different tracks, you'll have to post it as is.)

[Steven Davis]

Hey Glen,

I put the wave here, Index of /delete

Thanks for taking a hack at it. I owe you one.

[Greg Miller]

Steven,

I've done a quickie cleanup. I'm at home right now so have access to only limited software.

"Computer fans"? That sounds more like a wind tunnel. With fans, there are usually a few predominant peaks from the frequency of the blades. Your file has a huge amount of broadband noise. Even after cleaning, it still sounds as if it was recorded in an office, not in a studio. (And what about the female voice that's clearly audible under the narrator at the end of the file?)

Anyway, it is an improvement. But for some reason, this forum won't let me upload it. The file size is 2.8MB, and the forum says there's an 8.3MB size limit, so that's not the problem. But it won't upload successfully at the moment. Also, this forum won't allow an MP3 extension, so that's not an option.

At this point I have spent more time putzing around trying to upload the file, than I spent cleaning it. I'm going to give up. If the forum "file management" tool becomes operational again, I'll upload the processed sample for you. Sorry but my hands are apparently tied at the moment.

PS: I did post a note about this in the general forum, hopefully an admin will read it and will fix the transfer function.

[Steven Davis]

Thank you. I can't upload to the forum either. And yes, this was in an office. My email can take 20 meg if you want to me to shoot you my email. At this point, I'm not sure if it can be cleaned enough or if I'll have to rerecord it. But thank you for taking time out to do it.

[Greg Miller]

OK, let's try EMail. I think my ISP will allow this file to go through (of course it will be bigger than 8MB once it's converted from 8-bit to 7-bit, but I think it will still be OK). And if it doesn't go through as a WAV, I can convert it to a much smaller MP3 and that should definitely make it through the EMail system.

Send me a PM with your EMail address, and I'll send the file back to you.

BTW, I'm sure it could be a little cleaner than this, but I didn't want to spend an inordinate amount of time on it. If you think it's not good enough, then not much time wasted. If you think it's OK, then we can talk about doing the entire file.

[Steven Davis]

Hey Greg,

That's much better than I was able to do. I'd love to know what software you used. I use FCPX and Vegas, is it a plugin? I'm going to have some music underneath it, so that'll help. If you want to give me quote on cleaning the whole thing that'll help me figure out if we want to just re record it. I will talk to my client and see what he says about the background talking. We did four good takes on it, but there's talking here and there.

[Greg Miller]

Steven,

I did this at home on an old system with Cool Edit Pro. I ran five passes with different processing on each one ... that's the trick. I have access to Audition at the office, during the week, unless something crucial is in the works. I also have access to other software here, but I think CEP is adequate for the file you sent. If I got really serious about it, I could probably get it a bit cleaner, before running into audible artifacts.

If you want, let me know some details about the whole project ... number of files, total time, etc., and we can talk about some further work on it. You can just reply to the EMail that I sent with the file.

Thanks,
Greg

[Battle Vaughan]

Not to horn in, (and I also can't upload the file) I tried Audition CS6 with: normalize to -6 db. adaptive noise reduction followed by de-ess filter. Can't remove the people talking in the background at the end, but result is acceptable, I think.
Settings: Reduce 35%, Noisiness 50%, Noise floor -3, Signal threshold 10, Spectral decay rate 400, broadband preservation 100, FFT 2048, high quality render selected. I also could email the file if you like, can't understand why I can't post it here....

[Steven Davis]

I kinda figured dedicated software could do well.

[Dave Blackhurst]

Just FYI, posting files has been broken for quite some time - Chris was supposed to have fixed it, but I've tried to upload .jpegs with no luck...

Anyone reporting it to the admin(s), feel free to reference this as an OLD, unfixed bug....

[Greg Miller]

I reported it to Chris tonight, and he said he would look into it.

I surely wish they'd add MP3 as an allowable format while they're at it. Not that I'd want to use MP3 for a final product, but for auditioning example files as part of a discussion here, it would allow for a reasonably long time without a huge file size.

[Christopher Young]

A quick bash at it in Vegas.

www.sendspace.com/pro/dl/iw5xfc

Chris Young
Sydney