View Full Version : How to salvage this audio file


Yang Wen
September 1st, 2008, 01:16 PM
Ok, I'm an idiot.. I recorded a live performance but I I placed the microphone in the vicinity of a bunch of extension cords.. the resulting recording has this constant electric buzz in it..

Here's a pic of the waveform..

http://img401.imageshack.us/img401/8184/audionoisefi1.jpg

The spikes at the top and bottom is the noise.. How can I remove the noise in this file? I'm using Audacity as my audio editor? I wish it was intuitive as dragging all of those points towards 0 db!

Thanks
Yang

Rick Reineke
September 1st, 2008, 04:48 PM
Try a noise reduction program. Some software companies include, Bias, Sony, Isotope, Cedar, Waves, ect.
Some are costly. Bias Soundsoap used to have a demo that allowed saving w/o demo beeps. The pro ver. of Sound Forge now comes bungled with NR-2. Adobe Audition also has some kind or NR process, as does Wavelab, and other pro editing/mastering app.s. Check out some demos .

Carl Hayes
September 29th, 2008, 08:05 PM
DC7 from www.enhancedaudio.com has excellent tools for this exact task. The buzz is composed entirely of harmonics of the 60-Hz (or perhaps 50-Hz depending on where you are) powerline frequency. DC7 (that's the current version; I've used DC6 for years) handles this amazingly well. I've been their happy customer since at least 1990, through several generations of their software, and it gets better all the time. Probably there are other products that do as well, but DC (Diamond Cut) is the only one I'm really familiar with.