I have a file exported as a WAV file. This has a hiss that I don’t hear in Audacity only when played using the Windows player. Any idea how to fix this. I submitted it as an audition, and they hear it too How can I be sure my WAV files are clean ?
If you post a short sample WAV here (just a few seconds) we can take a look / listen.
Ensure that the sample includes some normal level audio as well as the “hiss”.
See here for how to post audio files to the forum: https://forum.audacityteam.org/t/how-to-post-an-audio-sample/29851/1
I don’t hear the hiss when I listen through audacity, or Windows media player but do when it is played using VLC media player. The person I submitted it to does hear it -not sure what they played it on.
Thanks!
There’s a little bit of hiss, but it’s not ‘bad’.
Are you trying to get it accepted by ACX?
What processing, if any, have you done on that clip in your last message?
How are you listening to it (make + model of headphones / speakers)
Fascinating.
I can’t make the clip pass Audiobook acceptance no matter what I do. It’s always too noisy. The noise reduction tools and the audio analysis tools don’t agree with each other.
That’s scary. Somebody is lying.
There are some problems with posting a really short clip. At your standards, you should be able to post a 20 second clip without the forum objecting to it.
As above, make sure you have some Room Tone (hold your breath for two seconds).
In my opinion, you should be able to post your work and be acceptable to anybody. Why you’re not is a mystery.
That not to say I didn’t find anything “normal” wrong. I did. You have a wall power hum tone in the show. You’re in the US, right? I found 120Hz tone in the background noise (If anybody asks you). This could be a bad microphone cable, a laptop fan too close, refrigerator noise (less likely). Some older CFL desk lamps used to do this.
I’m doing this in the field, so I don’t have access to my hot-zot sound system. I’ll do that later. In the mean time please post that longer clip. This isn’t theater, so if you have to cut off a word to make it fit into 20 seconds, nobody will be upset.
Fascinating. There’s nothing wrong with the clip, but it doesn’t work. I may have to throw the runes on this one.
Koz
If nobody said this yet, Do Not Process the posted clips. No filters or effects. Record it, export and post it.
We can’t take effects out of a clip and it just muddies the water when wer’e trying to fix something. Don’t Help.
Koz
I am recording inside a closet with sound proofing all around.I did find a slight buzz coming from a lamp where it was plugged into an extension cord (I have now placed that behind a piece of soundproofing foam. No computers with fans in there, just me,the mic and a monitor. Mic and headphones are new (within 6 months). Using a YETI blue mic and JBL headphones. Was trying to get accepted at VoiceBunny -ACX stuff was cleared okay. I will record that again and see if it happens now that the plug is covered. IT was just weird that I didn’t hear it when listening thru Audacity. The space ranges between 42 & 47.4dcbl when I use the program on my Iphone to measure.
I did read the stuff about Dither but was somewhat confused. I recorded the original piece 16bit, not 32 and down to 16 when exporting. But I did probably cut, paste some things -could this be causing the problem?
The noise-floor on that is low, -55dB, that’s good.
There’s very faint a tone at 120Hz which you can notch out …
The noise someone is complaining about could be the popping & clicking while you are speaking,
rather than the background …
If you experiment with the position of the pop-shield, a lot of that could be avoided, (rather than removed in post-production).
Could be the “ACX Check” plug-in. The noise measurement in some versions is off. The “Contrast” tool is not so convenient, but it will give an accurate RMS (Z-weighted / unweighted) measurement in all recent versions of Audacity.
I asked for that. The initial sample was just to see / hear if we are dealing with oceans of noise, or something more subtle. It’s subtle.
Yes, that’s there, but it’s not bad, and can be easily removed. Best to remove the noise at source IF you can find it.
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Check all leads and connections - ensure they are clean, connections secure, and avoid running signal cables alongside power cables.
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Use a reasonable quality mic cable. No need to go extreme, but something decent. In Europe, if a cable says it has Neutrik plugs and / or Belden cable, then it’s probably reasonable to good quality.
If 1 and 2 make no difference…
- Do a test recordng of silence (microphone turned on, but no-one in the cupboard), and while the recording is running, go round the house and turn off everything electrical one by one. Then go round the house again and turn everything that you turned off, back on again. Stop the recording, trim any ckicks from the ends, and normalize to 0 dB. Do you hear (or see in the spectrogram track view) that low hum change? If at some point the hum suddenly drops to a lower level and then comes back up again later, then you’ve found something in your house that is making an electrical hum.
If still no improvement, you can use a notch filter as Trebor described.
Who complained, VoiceBunny, or a VoiceBunny client?
Do VoiceBunny publish specifications for recordings (signal level / noise level / format /…)? If so, please post a link.
Dither should not be a problem - all professional studios use it. For a 16-bit file, the dither noise should be around -84 dB RMS, which is insignificant for practical purposes.
The effect of dithering (or not) is extremely subtle. It extends the possible dynamic range of 16-bit audio and eliminates “quantization noise” at the expense of a really tiny bit of hiss. Even though the hiss in your recording is very low level, it is massively more than dither noise (as expected).
Better to work in 32-bit. Processing works better in 32-bit, and that can sometimes be noticeable. Dither should not be noticeable (unless you’re doing something very wrong, which does not appear to be the case).
Cut and paste type edits should not make any difference at all to sound quality (other than the possibility of a click at the edit point). “Processing” (effects) will usually make a difference (for good or bad), but not simple cut / paste / delete type edits.
Did you confirm that there is no “processing” (no effects) on these samples? If that’s the case, then we’re starting from a good place - the samples are pretty good for raw recordings.
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I can usually “feel” when ACX-Check is going to deliver unstable news, but I couldn’t this time.
I know about the half-second restriction. By what method does ACX-Check deliver higher than normal noise or unstable readings on this clip?
Is there an ACX-Check without this problem?
Koz
Thanks for the help. I went back in and used the Notch filter and I no longer hear the sound at all, no matter what I am listening from. I still have no idea what caused it in the first place, but I think I have fixed it.