I obtained the best outcome by combining two tutorials, one mainly based on the Voicetrap plugin for FL Studio, and the other using Audacity. Back in the day when I used Audacity, I'd open the Nyquist prompt and tap in '(mult s (hzosc 35))' to get a great Dalek-like voice effect.
I have a talk I recorded (digital recorder a few feet from a speaker) and have some noise from a little bit low signal. I removed it in. I know if you do to much removal, it will affect the sound. I tried several different settings, including all the way to 'less.' I get a weird noise that is wrecking the recording.I get this on other recordings I've done, so it's not this recording, but audacity. I have read that this can happen in audacity when you use to much noise removal, but with going all the way over to less, I thought I would avoid it.Is anyone familiar with this?
![Robotic Robotic](/uploads/1/2/5/5/125511251/709765998.jpg)
What can I do?Chris. Good question. It's really because you're not using the right tool for the job.There's a great free VST plugin called Floorfish which can work on a hissy source by using dynamic range expansion and noise gating. Takes some practice to figure it out, however.Here's your noise clip. That Niagara Falls drop at 8000Hz says the source was probably an Mp3 or Mp2 compressed file.
Between 4200Hz and 8100Hz you see an increase in volume, which is probably where a lot of the hiss comes from. Anything above 8130Hz is high frequency crackle. So with an aggressive EQ, you can cut between 7600 and 20000. Anything below 80hz on the low end of the spectrum is probably rumble and can be cut as well. The tricky bit is reducing the frequencies between 4200 and 8100Hz without affecting the overall sound too much.
Experimentation will be required in that area.Here's an example of EQ run against your noise file. You'll hear the before and after every 1 second. I have to say that audio is a real weakness of mine. I've been working on bitmapped images for 25(?) years and feel I have a deep intuitive grasp of them in all their variants - but I can't say the same about audio. I have no problems working to clean up a video source, but I'm lost when it comes to cleaning up audio.As a programmer I do have a technical understanding of the maths (and the code) behind FIR, IIR, and FFT - but I lack knowledge of how and when to apply it, eg. I have no real idea of what causes hiss or how to get rid of it without causing the chirpy cheep cheep artifacts.I've tried buying books on the subject, but they've been universally awful so far: DSP books that teach me how to synthesise a choir of bells (I'm not trying to create music), 'All About Audio' books that tell me how to build my own sound studio. Does anyone have a recommendation?
I have a talk I recorded (digital recorder a few feet from a speaker) and have some noise from a little bit low signal. I removed it in. I know if you do to much removal, it will affect the sound. I tried several different settings, including all the way to 'less.' I get a weird noise that is wrecking the recording.
Which version of Audacity?The built-in 'noise removal effect' is much better in the 1.3.5 'beta' than the 1.2.6 'stable' version.PS - I loaded your last clip and applied the effect with 17 dB of reduction. That got rid of a lot of hiss, the voice got a little 'underwater' sounding, but better than the original. If you spent longer experimenting I'm sure you could get a decent result.