Noise Removal enhancement

[DickN]

I'd like to see a control added to the Noise Removal effect. This effect does a fantastic job for most purposes and is a huge improvement over 1.2.6, but I've encountered a situation in which violating the instructions a bit yields a worthwhile improvement.

The situation was:
The only significant noise to be removed was tape hiss. Applying Noise Removal based on a sample of pure tape hiss dulled the heck out of a low-amplitude chime instrument our drummer uses. I don't know what it's called, but it looks like a rack of small wind chimes. Same problem with a gentle cymbal (brushed or tapped) sound with no other instrument playing. I experimented (a lot) and found that if I duplicated the noise sample and fiddled with the amplitude of the new noise-sample track before using it as the noise sample I could nearly eliminate the damage to these subtle sounds without compromising the noise reduction.

What would have simplified this process is a "noise floor margin" control that adjusts how far above the noise floor a sound has to be to qualify as signal. This is essentially what I was doing by adjusting the noise sample amplitude.

[steve]

I don't know what it's called, but it looks like a rack of small wind chimes.

They're just called "chimes".

What would have simplified this process is a "noise floor margin" control that adjusts how far above the noise floor a sound has to be to qualify as signal. This is essentially what I was doing by adjusting the noise sample amplitude.

This is available in Audacity 1.3.13 alpha, so unless it is superseded by something better it should be available in the next Audacity release. The new control is called "Sensitivity" and it does as you describe.