Audacity Forum

IT WAS THE HARD DRIVE MAKING THIS HUMMING NOISE!!

Isn't that fun? My hum was hiding for six months. Normal human ears auto-filter room noises. It's only when you hear your environment playing back to you does it occur to you how noisy everything is.

there is still some white noise when I turn the mic on, and ideally there shouldn't be any difference between mic off and on...

That is ideal, but it only happens when you throw money.

Once you pass convenience of operation, clarity and quality of sound, the next important Microphone system consideration is noise.

Everything makes noise. When you talk into a microphone, your electrical voice isn't very loud. It's competing directly with the atomic-level noises inside the microphone or USB digitizer. It's rain in the trees. FFFFFFFFFFFFF. That's the noise you hear, right?

That's normal. Hopefully you have to turn the speakers up a bit to hear it? Only when you get up into the multi-thousand dollar systems can you listen and not realize it's on. So we can lower it and manage it, but a home system isn't likely to make it vanish.

Shoot another 20 second voice test as you would perform normally. Read the gas bill.
"Melbourne Gas and Electric would like to remind you...."

http://www.kozco.com/tech/audacity/Test ... _Clip.html

Koz

A sister posting to this one is able to live record at almost textbook conditions. Process in Audacity and out the door. No Noise Reduction. So the Audacity internal noises are normally not significant.

Koz

ok, I've got another one for you

in every production I get several "clicks" definitely coming from Audacity - showing as thin vertical spikes/bars on the track, which are impossible to remove if they are mixed with voice - even with the Click Removal function of the program.

The only way to fix them is to re-record that section.

What is causing those pesky clicks?

I'll listen right after you post the sound file.

Koz

Every production and every producer are different.

Some don't mind few imperfections. Unfortunately, I'm a pedantic perfectionist when it comes to my work (can't get any worse than that!)

Just finished my new podcast episode. The noise is well reduced, but it is still there so I'm not entirely happy, but don't have the time to fiddle with it, need to publish my episode now.

I think I need to reduce dB on the mic as much as possible. I will also check my earlier productions. Either the noise was not there, or for some reason I didn't pay attention to it.

I will submit my test file soon, thanks.

If you're referring to loud ticks, you can go into each one with the magnifier and remove them manually. That's assuming you only have a handful or so. Occasional sharp, loud ticks is the rough one. I get those on my machine and I have no idea where it's coming from.

That's when you start to worry about what else the machine is doing that maybe it can't keep up with your job.

Can you post one of those ticks? Like five or ten seconds of show with a loud tick in the middle? As WAV, please. MP3 distortion isn't welcome here.

Koz

ok, my test file is attached (re noise).

it's not as bad once I have unplugged the hard drive (silly me!)

I am usually getting several small clicks (about 1-2 mm on the wave graph). Every so often - perhaps 2-4 in a 20 min production - I will get a big loud click which resembles, interestingly, the hard click of a metronome, and shows as a tall vertical line about 0.5 - 1 cm on the graph.

I always delete them where I can, and if they are under the voice, I re-record that part. If there are any left out, I wouldn't remember exactly in which production and where, sorry.... So next time when I get them, I will copy before fixing and upload here.

thanks

I know I have a terrible time slowing down my Theta waves.


This clip makes it to ACX Compliance with just the three normal tools in the Audiobook Mastering Suite. No noise reduction.
You can experiment with other tools if you want, but it's nice to know there's a straight-line, established pathway available.

You're only about 1.2dB away from failing noise, but that's very easily fixed with gentle noise reduction of your choice. The recommended corrections values are 6, 6, 6 or you may even be able to get by with less, like 4, 6, 6.

So we're done. I like your presentation. You sound like a learned European doctor. You may be a learned European doctor, but it's good to sound the part.


I didn't do a crazy analysis of the sound. Some people have easy methods to avoid noises—they don't have to use Noise Reduction. I'll do that in a bit.

Koz

You do have a single noise tone (120Hz if you're keeping score), but removing it doesn't affect either the sound or the ACX Analysis.

There's two versions, one with normal processing and the other with 6, 6, 6 noise reduction. Both pass ACX.

Koz

ha,ha, ha......

Learned European doctor

.....learned- maybe.... European - yes.... doctor - no...

you might like to try my Theta meditation (fully guided so you will not get lost)...it does wonders to your brain (amongst other things)... especially people with the strong left brain (analytical) dominance will greatly benefit from this meditation.

Thnak you for the analysis of my clip. You lost me there for a moment with the Audiobook Mastering Tool which I don't have... but I get it - this is YOUR tool. I will try your secret 6-6-6 combination in Audacity.

I checked your flie - yes there is some improvement. This is much better of course than the original clip I posted with that horrible hum from my external hard drive.

The testing tool I use is my ears. If it sounds good (pun intended) to my sensitive hearing and quality control - it's good to go. If it doesn't sound professionally and pleasantly enough - it needs to be fixed. And seriously - even if the audio passes the ACX or any other sophisticated technical test and still does NOT sound good to me - my ears win.

Thank you again Koz for your assistance!

PS don't mean to get personal but...your surname sounds Polish