[RESOLVED] Background noise
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Thread: [RESOLVED] Background noise

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Dec 2001
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    Resolved [RESOLVED] Background noise

    Device: HP 7 Plus Tablet
    Program: Sound Recorder

    Okay, so I recorded a long conversation with my cousin in mp3. We were in a roomful of people and there's a lot of background noise.
    Would anyone know a software that can take the noise out? Or do I have to take it to a professional studio engineer?

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Jul 1998
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    There are ways to try and do that. A graphic equalizer would be useful if the background noise contains a lot of high and low frequencies that are not in the normal speech range which is almost entirely midrange... you could remove the lows below 150 HZ and the highs above 2000 HZ and that leaves mostly speech range sounds. However there will still be background noise in that remaining frequency range so it's not a perfect solution. This would work best if the background noise was something besides others talking ... like music or machinery etc but can still be somewhat useful even if the background noise is just others talking.

    Another technique is to use an audio expander/compressor (aka noisegate) which increases the sound level of the louder parts of the recording (the wanted talking) and decreases the levels of the rest of the recording which would be the noise in the background. This also may have limited effect if the background noise is close to the volume level of the talking you want to hear since there does need to be some difference in level in order for the electronics to differentiate between the two. There are some noise reduction units that can key on specific bandwidths but they are not necessarily easy to use and are generally not found for free online either. In fact the whole expander method isn't easy because it takes some learning to figure out how to use it and the programs, for the most part, are only available as part of larger audio recording suites which generally aren't free except for one program I'll get to below.

    There are already some equalizers built in to parts of Windows.. your audio driver might have advanced properties that has one.. check your Windows audio drivers advanced options (usually Realtek) and see if there is one there. Many audio players like Windows own player have one as well.. you can access it in the players options/audio section. But these equalizers are only good for playing back the audio.. they don't allow you to re-record the track with the equalization in place.

    To do that sort of process you'd need a program like Audacity which has a good built in graphic equalizer that would allow you to re-record the files with the eq in.

    http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/Equalization

    http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

    There's a learning curve of course but the program is very good and is free.

    Now as far as noise reduction by expansion/compression Audacity has that too...

    http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Noise_Removal

    But again there's a definite learning curve here and it's more complex than the simple equalization process. But it's there for you... it will just take some reading and experimentation to get it done. I have to say though that this kind of noise reduction process would not be easy for a layman and would probably take a few days of reading and experimentation to figure out.

    Professionals doing this sort of audio processing would generally use both of these techniques in tandem to get the best results.

    I'd always suggest making copies of the recordings and working with those so you always have the originals as backups.

    Note: I'd want to be doing this on a desktop or decent laptop not a tablet which would have limited resources for this type of work and I don't know offhand if the tablet or it's media/audio player has a built in equalizer either.

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  3. #3
    Join Date
    Dec 2001
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    Thanks much. This seems like something a specialist/pro should be hired to do.
    I used the Tablet to record; I'm using the Desktop to retrieve the file.
    Thanks again.

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