I think I’m close now. I’m separating out everything between words and hitting that with a Filter Curve EQ. It’s very fast and easy. And I plan to append all of my chapters and process them together, then separate the chapters, so that everything sounds the same.
Here is my process:
I started the test by appending the three conditions I faced:
- With my building’s booster fans running (which I have since worked around, but I wanted to see how well this was handled)
- Boosters off, but the outside A/C unit for the adjacent building running
- Boosters off, outside A/C unit off – so just my room noise
You can easily see the different spectral content of the three noise profiles.
Applied Noise Gate with threshold -39dB with level reduction of -100dB to get just the speaking. Then inverted this and mixed it with the original waveform, to get just the parts between words.
Then apply a Filter Curve EQ to squash the booster and A/C noise from 140Hz to 860Hz by -96dB, and soften my breaths from 860Hz to 4700Hz by -18dB.
I see the stopband ripples but haven’t noticed any artifacts yet.
I put this into a macro.
FilterCurve:f0=“120” f1=“160” f2=“840” f3=“880” f4=“4680” f5=“4720” FilterLength=“8191” InterpolateLin=“0” InterpolationMethod=“B-spline” v0=“0” v1=“-96” v2=“-96” v3=“-18” v4=“-18” v5=“-96”
I mix this with the original gated waveform (with just the speaking), then get the Noise Profile and apply my macro with NR(6,6,6).
SelectAll:
ZoomSel:
NoiseReduction:Use_Preset=“”
FilterCurve:Use_Preset=“Factory Preset:Low rolloff for speech”
LoudnessNormalization:DualMono=“1” LUFSLevel=“-23” NormalizeTo=“1” RMSLevel=“-20” StereoIndependent=“0”
Low-passFilter:FREQUENCY=“6300” ROLLOFF=“dB24”
Limiter:GAIN-L=“0” GAIN-R=“0” HOLD=“10” MAKEUP=“No” THRESH=“-3.5” TYPE=“SoftLimit”
AcxCheck:Use_Preset=“”
Questions/Thoughts:
A. I realize this spectral gating process leaves the different-level noise profiles “beneath” the spoken words (at least above 140Hz), but I haven’t been able to notice any differences.
B. I wonder if ACX will reject based on almost no noise content other than breaths above 140Hz.
C. Can I set the Noise Reduction parameters in the macro? I’ve read the Github entry and the Auto Profile in Noise Reduction? topic. In the latter, Steve says,
“The main consideration regarding Noise Reduction in Macros, is that there are no settings available.”
I don’t mind selecting the Noise Profile before running the macro, but I’d like to be able to set the parameters (Noise reduction (dB), Sensitivity, and Frequency smoothing (bands); e.g. 8,6,6) in the macro. The Github entry and this topic make it sound like some people are able to set these parameters within a macro–though I may be misinterpreting their discussions.
I’d appreciate all thoughts and comments. Thank you.
Zash