I made my first recording today, all spoken words. There were some instances where the volume of my voice was too low, and I raised it by going into effects/amplify. Although it did make the selected portions louder, these louder portions also have a bit of hiss or background noise.
I tried to remove the background noise/hiss by going into effects and selecting noise removal. I selected a sample of the noise, however, when I tried to remove the noise, it brought the volume back down to where it was before, or even lower. How do I remove the background noise and while leaving the loudness at the level I would like?
Did you follow [u]this tutorial[/u] and feed-in a “noise fingerprint” of noise only?
it brought the volume back down to where it was before, or even lower.
That’s strange… You can get artifacts (side-effects), but the signal level shouldn’t drop…
…these louder portions also have a bit of hiss or background noise.
Of course when you turn-up the volume, the background noise gets turned-up too.
It’s generally better to remove the noise before adjusting the volume, especially if everything was recorded under the same conditions with the same background noise. That way, you can set-up the noise reduction once.
It might be too late, but it’s always best to prevent noise and/or get a good strong signal-to-noise ratio to begin with, rather than trying to remove the noise later. Pros still record with good equipment in soundproof studios, because even pro software sometimes can’t remove noise without artifacs.
Thanks, I followed the instructions more closely this time and it did a much better job, perhaps I did something out of order before?
Did you determine what you were doing wrong during the recording? It’s far and away better to produce a good, clear, even recording than to try to patch mistakes later. Stand-alone microphones like USB have no ability to change volume on the fly during the recording and they tend to have a very narrow range between overload (too loud) and noise/hiss (too soft).
Overload is immediately fatal, so manufacturers tend toward slightly low volumes, but it’s very difficult to get rid of hiss without messing up your voice, too.
Koz
Thanks. I’m not sure exactly what I did wrong, as I said I’m a complete newbie, but I suspect that you’re right, making sure that my voice doesn’t drop when I’m speaking is probably the best way to handle this!