'Noise Reduction' not working

[Anna_BRITstralian]

When I was doing a lot of audio editing work, my workflow was to create a new folder to contain the project and everything related to that project. Included in that folder would be a text file containing my production notes / log. My “off-site backups” would be copies of the entire folder, so if the worst happened (the studio burned down / plague / war / volcano / …) the project would survive, including all source files and production notes. (This was company policy).

Thanks, yes I do the same re back ups off-site (past mistakes are a great learning experience!) but I will definitely introduce the log!!

[waxcylinder]

Do you know if the journal was human readable or usable in any way for Audacity users? I tried looking at it in an older alpha version, but it just crashed, so I was unable to find out exactly what it was supposed to be.

Not sure, I seem to recall that he was partly interested in it as an automated way to build Macros.

Peter.

[waxcylinder]

I do get a jounal txt file in the Audacity settings folder:

That was just importing an audio file and adding the cut.copy/paste toolbar - I got a journalling error when I tried recording

[Anna_BRITstralian]

Hi all,

The noise reduction is definitely not working - I have tested again and I made sure to use raw unedited audio this time.

Still unable to add any attachments to my posts…

Please see selection of track saved as WAV here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1X4vqadmQTjYSW-_1mn1KinbYFIm_-wUR/view?usp=share_link

Steps:

1. Maximise gain to full (so that you can clearly hear the white noise)
2. Select section of track with no voice e.g. 30 seconds - 35 seconds
3. Effect - Noise Reduction - Get Noise Profile
4. Select entire track
5. Effect - Noise Reduction
6. Change all parameters to 6
7. OK

Play audio back with gain on full

result: no change

[Anna_BRITstralian]

It appears … that Noise Reduction tool is not working.

waxcylinder and koz are now recommending the parameters 6, 6, 6. In fact, it is expected Audacity will change to these as defaults in the next release.

Try these settings. If they don’t work for you, post a .WAV file illustrating the difficulty you are having.

Have just posted with a WAV file

[steve]

1. Maximise gain to full (so that you can clearly hear the white noise)

The “noise” between 22.5 and 36.5 seconds is not “white noise”. It’s crackly with abrupt peaks. Here’s that section amplified to 0 dB:

Unfortunately Noise Reduction won’t work properly with this type of noise. Noise Reduction only works effectively with reasonably constant, low level noise, and while this noise is “low level”, it isn’t “constant” but highly intermittent.

It is rather a strange noise. What effects have been applied? Have you used some sort of noise gate?

[Anna_BRITstralian]

1. Maximise gain to full (so that you can clearly hear the white noise)

It is rather a strange noise. What effects have been applied? Have you used some sort of noise gate?

No effects have been applied. This is on my guests channel. I used Zencastr to record and my guest was using headphones and attached mic to record (not ideal, but best we had).

Do you have any other suggestions as to how I can easily remove this noise? (the only option I am aware of is to select each section and ‘silence’)

Thank you

[steve]

Do you have any other suggestions as to how I can easily remove this noise?

The noise isn’t terrible - It’s about 60 dB below the foreground sound. The worst part about the noise is that there are short blips within it, which are around 12 dB higher than the average level.

The best approach in my opinion would be to identify where the noise is coming from, and eliminate it at source.

I used Zencastr to record and my guest was using headphones and attached mic to record (not ideal, but best we had).

I suspect that Zencastr is the source of the noise. It sounds to me that your guest’s voice is bleeding through into your track.
I’m not familiar with Zencastr - what does it do? Where is your guest? Where is your guest’s voice?

[Anna_BRITstralian]

Thanks Steve

In the case that I cannot re-record this - do you think the best option I have would be to just silence the parts of the track where the guest is not talking?

To answer your questions:
Zencastr (https://zencastr.com/) is an online recording platform which “records in 16-bit 48k WAV audio track per guest, regardless of internet connection (local recording)”.

My guest was in a small room (no access to a recording studio) using a laptop, plug-in earbud headphones with microphone attached to the cable (hence audio bleed of my voice coming through the headphones). She is in a remote location with no access to better facilities, unfortunately this is the best we had.

Pre-recording, we did some sound testing, and I asked her to hold the cable steadily to eliminate the cable movement sound.

Do you still think it could be Zencastr, or do you think it could be the equipment?

[steve]

I think the worst of the “noise” is the guest’s voice bleeding through into your track. I assume that the guest track and your track will be mixed together at some point, in which case the guest’s voice is likely to mask out the noise in your track.

Try mixing the guest track and your track together (use copies rather than the originals - this is just a test). Is the noise still apparent? If not, then you can safely ignore the noise.

If you decide that you really do need to remove noises from the “silences” in your track, try the “Noise Gate” effect. The “threshold” level will probably need to be about 10 dB higher that the Noise Gate analysis says (due to the noise being erratic). The other settings can probably be left at default settings.
See: https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/noise_gate.html


For future cases, we may be able to suggest a better setup so as to avoid the bleed through, but that’s a different question that would be best in its own forum thread. If you would like to discus this, please start a new topic and provide a lot of detail about your current setup.

[Anna_BRITstralian]

Thank you so much