Audio Cleanup

September 21, 2004 12:09 AM

Can someone recommend an application (or plugin) that is good at removing or cleaning up live recordings that are occasionally plagued by wind noise.
posted by darainwa to computers & internet (3 comments total)

You might have some success with SoundSoap - but whatever you do keep your expectations low. You're probably not going to be able to remove the noise entirely, but may be able to reduce it a bit and make the underlying recording a bit more intelligible.
posted by aladfar at 6:50 AM on September 21, 2004

The Soundhack +spectralcompand plugin claims to be "a highly tunable broadband noise remover, capable of removing hiss, hum and machine noise, without damaging the original sound" when used in expansion mode. Haven't tried it personally so I can't vouch for it, but there's a two-week trial version available. It's one of four plugins bundled for $150; you can't buy them individually.
posted by Dean King at 8:47 AM on September 21, 2004

Do you have a recording of the wind noise by itself? If so, there's a method in which you take a waveform of the noise and subtract it from the waveform of the wanted sound with noise. I have not actually tried this myself, so I don't know how well it really works.

You could also try a gate on the sound, which would chop off sounds below a certain volume.

Like aladfar said, don't expect much. Wind noise covers a broad range of frequencies, which makes it difficult to isolate. Probably a combination of these methods with a bit of eq, or one of the plugins, would work best.
posted by lasm at 9:23 AM on September 21, 2004