Hello,
I use my hard-drive based mp3 player to record voice.
The sound quality is not very good, but 1.3 noise removal works wonders.
The main remaining problem is hard drive noise when it spins up.
Every 12 minutes the drive will spin up, producing a rising “whirr” sound for about 5 seconds, then a sharp loud click when it parks again.
Is there an easy way to remove these periodic noises from a longer recording?
(aside from getting another recorder)
Are you sure that it’s the hard drive spinning up and not a fan kicking in?
i am fairly certain it is the drive.
The player should not have any fans. As far as I know the drive is the only moveable part.
However I am mainly looking into ways to remove the noise from existing recordings taken with this player, regardless of the source.
While I am also looking into possible replacements for the hardware, I really would prefer to reserve that discussion for other forums and threads.
Oh I see, the noise is from the hard drive on the mp3 player / recorder. Usually those are pretty quiet.
It’s always best to try and avoid the noise rather than fixing it later. You’ve not said what this device is, but if you are using a built in microphone on the device, you may get better results if you can plug in an external microphone.
Regarding the immediate problem, try recording some silence and wait for the noise to kick in, then keep recording for at lest 10 seconds. You will then have a “noise sample” that you can use with the Noise Removal effect on those sections where there is that noise. Having not heard the noise, or what you are recording I can’t give any guarantees how well this will work, but it’s worth a try.
You can have other, similar problems. There was once a USB sound device on the market which would generate “spin-up” noises clearly in the show by interfering with the USB power supply. It wasn’t audible until you played back the track – or listened to the “live” show on the computer.
The device has little or no isolation from the noise on the USB 5V pins, and some computers are very noisy.
Koz