Audacity Forum

Adacity noise removal works very well, but almost always adds a peculiar "swishy" sound which was not originally there.

Audacity 1.2 Noise Reduction was never anything to write home about. Upgrade to Audacity 1.3.

Audacity 1.2 is very old and no longer supported,
patched, corrected, or updated. Audacity 1.2 can
be unstable on newer computers.

Download and install the latest Audacity 1.3 from here...

http://audacityteam.org/download/

You can install both audacity 1.2 and Audacity 1.3 on
the same computer, but only use one at a time.

Audacity 1.2 will not open projects made on Audacity 1.3.

If you use MP3 or some of the more modern audio
compression formats, get Lame and FFMpeg software
from the same web site. Do not use older software
or software from other web sites, even though they
may have the same names.

Koz

Further, we can't stress enough, you will never turn a noisy recording into an Academy Award. Even the best upgraded Noise Reduction has problems. You are urged strenuously to make clean recordings in the first place. What sort of noise are you trying to kill?

Koz

I had awful problems with 1.3, even after uninstalling and reinstalling it. It took about 90 seconds to open, and every time I opened the Preferences window and tried to make any kind of change, the program would freeze altogether and I'd have to use the Task Manager to close it.

I am trying to remove hiss from a 78rpm recording from 1929 made by my grandfather.

We have a very large collection of methods for cleaning vinyl, however none of them are going to work if you can't get the computer to run.

Audacity will not work into a full hard drive, one with errors or highly fragmented. It sounds a great deal like your drive is filling up.

Which Windows have you got?

A note having nothing to do with Audacity or the computer: 78 records have a groove size very different from 33 and 45. A needle mismatch creates noise as the 33-1/3 needle scrapes along the bottom of the 78 track instead of picking up music.

Are you using a 78 needle or cartridge? You may need a good deal less noise reduction and processing if you started out with a good playback in the first place.


Koz

When I first installed 1.3. it worked fine. I was having some problem which I don't remember, so I uninstalled it and installed 1.2.6. When I tried to reinstall 1.3, it now works super slowly. I am using Windows 7, and have 760 GB free out of 920 GB. Here are the computer stats:
Mfg: Dell
Model: Studio XPS 8100
Rating: 5.9
Processor: Inter ® Core(TM) i& CPU
860 @ 2.80GHz
2.80 GHz
RAM: 8.00 GB
System Type: 64-bit

Sorry, I am not working from a 78 directly--I was just trying to describe the sound I am trying to remove. I am working from a cassette copy of a reel-to-reel tape sent to us by the Yale Collection of Historical Sound Recordings, which was a copied from the 78. The cassette sounds just like the 7" reel.

Thanks so much for your time, Koz. I especially would love to know about this 90-second delay I am now experiencing with Audacity.

This tutorial from the manual may help you: http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/Reco ... pm_records

In particular see the section on "Filtering & noise removal". Even though you're not working direct from the 78s the notes in this section still apply.

And yes, I've noticed that the later Audacity Betas (and the latest Aplhas) seem to take longer to fire up. I will try to do some timing tests later.

WC

Thanks so much for your help ... I had previously missed your last reply.