How to remove White Noise?

Hi guys, I just started using audacity today with my Blue Yeti and Sennheiser headphones on Windows 10. I have everything set up correctly, but my microphone keeps picking up my PC’s computer fans and and other white noises during my recordings. I’ve looked up several guides on how to remove this white noise, but all of the guides I’ve seen have a “noise removal” effect. However, my current edition of Audacity (2.1.3) only has a “noise reduction” effect. When I set it to “reduce” on this effect, it doesn’t remove the white noise at all, and when I select “residue” it completely removes all of my audio. How can I remove the white noise without removing all of my audio?

Don’t double post. All of the forum elves see everything.

That’s not white noise. That’s just noise. OK, the FFFFFFF sound coming from the microphone could be white noise, but the stuff coming from the computer fans is totally not “white.” The stuff coming from the fans is “dirty” with some tones louder than others. Sometimes we can tell which country you’re in by listening to the fan noise. Different power systems run at different speeds and different tones.

Noise Reduction works in two swipes. First, drag-select some noise by itself. Just noise without any performance, voice or music. All of it. White, everything. This is letting the dog sniff the noise so he knows that to hunt for.

Effect > Noise Reduction > Profile.

Then, select the performance and Effect > Noise Reduction again. This time you get to pick the settings. The older default settings used to be a poor guess, but I think the newer settings are a good start.

Noise Reduction only works on noises that do not change. We can’t take out the news report if you left the radio on by accident.

Koz

Fair Warning, some Yeti microphones have a difficult noise I call The Yeti Curse. It’s a whine sound and it’s rough to suppress. We wrote a special tool for that.

http://kozco.com/tech/audacity/clips/USBMicrophoneWhineClip.mp3

Let us know.

Koz

Sorry for double posting and thank you for your timely response! Oh my… that is exactly the noise that my Blue Yeti is picking up! Gosh… how do I get rid of it? I really want my productions to sound clear and crisp, but if it’s a noise inherent in the microphone itself is there really anything I can do about it?

The “mosquito killer 4” plugin will remove it … USB Whine FIltering (Yeti Curse) - #35 by kozikowski ,
Use it on the lowest acceptable setting to minimize the collateral damage.

if it’s a noise inherent in the microphone itself is there really anything I can do about it?

That’s misleading. It’s a slightly sloppy microphone connected to a slightly sloppy USB system. Your microphone and computer hate each other.

I understand the Yeti Pro, at substantially higher cost, doesn’t do that.

But Mosquito-killer 4 should do a respectable job at the default setting of 8. A number of performers/presenters are doing that to great success.

Koz