Dear Ones,
What is the easiest method (and/or any method) for removing a cough and loud sniffles (nose and throat noises) from a track when it is happening simultaneously as the person speaking/chanting? I record a teacher who talks and often chants, and there is often this particular background noise happening simultaneously as a spoken word or chant. I'm trying to remove the background noise but not the teacher's vocals.
Thank you.
Removing background noise from real vocals
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kozikowski
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Re: Removing background noise from real vocals
There's no such thing as a "Take Out The Sneeze" filter, no. It would be pretty popular if there were.
There are highly restricted conditions under which some interfering sound can be managed (is that slippery enough for you?).
You killed off one tool by having a moving target. Constant low-level air conditioner whine for 30 minutes is a snap. Air conditioners that go on and off, coughing and sneezing, and Metro Buses that start up or slow down--are not.
The only other tools available make use of location. In the highly unlikely chance that you recorded the performance in stereo, there are software packages that can tell the performer is in the middle of the stage and the cougher is not. Or the performer is on the left and the cougher is on the right. If you present a mono performance, or used a single microphone to capture the work, you're dead.
There are manual tools you can try. Success depends on luck and whether or not you lead a clean, upstanding life. If the speaker took a breath or paused during the cough, you can go into the waveforms on the timeline and "duck" the volume briefly and make the cough less obvious. You need to do this for each cough, of course. If the hole is a little too obvious, you can take a snippit of "room tone" (cough-free background noise) and slide it into the hole. On a long show this can't take much over three or four weeks of editing.
Given non-difficult conditions, editing takes up, on average, ten times the show. If you have a 30 minute show, allow about five hours of editing.
There are very few variations on proper microphones during a performance.
Koz
There are highly restricted conditions under which some interfering sound can be managed (is that slippery enough for you?).
You killed off one tool by having a moving target. Constant low-level air conditioner whine for 30 minutes is a snap. Air conditioners that go on and off, coughing and sneezing, and Metro Buses that start up or slow down--are not.
The only other tools available make use of location. In the highly unlikely chance that you recorded the performance in stereo, there are software packages that can tell the performer is in the middle of the stage and the cougher is not. Or the performer is on the left and the cougher is on the right. If you present a mono performance, or used a single microphone to capture the work, you're dead.
There are manual tools you can try. Success depends on luck and whether or not you lead a clean, upstanding life. If the speaker took a breath or paused during the cough, you can go into the waveforms on the timeline and "duck" the volume briefly and make the cough less obvious. You need to do this for each cough, of course. If the hole is a little too obvious, you can take a snippit of "room tone" (cough-free background noise) and slide it into the hole. On a long show this can't take much over three or four weeks of editing.
Given non-difficult conditions, editing takes up, on average, ten times the show. If you have a 30 minute show, allow about five hours of editing.
There are very few variations on proper microphones during a performance.
Koz