How To Get Rid Of Background Noise In Logic

Removing podcast room noise, hum, and repeat

I produce podcasts featuring different people using dissimilar microphones in all sorts of unlike homes, which is to say that the nature of the sound files I receive from my panelists can vary widely.

My goal is to make everyone audio as skillful equally possible for the benefit of the listener—and eliminate telltale groundwork noises that would come and go as dissimilar people speak. Equally a result, I spend a lot of time (and accept spent more money than I'd expected) trying to remove dissonance from people'due south audio files.

This sort of stuff isn't for everybody—you don't need to buy expensive software and spend a half an hour or longer processing all of your audio files in order to make a proficient podcast. (As well, in well-nigh cases the best long-term solution is to get your panelists to improve their equipment or technique, non to fix it in mail service.) In fact, there are times when I wonder if all the work I put into the removal of dissonance from sound files is something listeners fifty-fifty find. But I notice. And I exercise think getting the noises out improves my podcasts.

Anyway, there'due south a lot of software out at that place that will let you remove dissonance from your podcasts. Nearly of them work the same way: you "train" the software on a portion of the audio that contains just the noise y'all want to remove, which is generally a moment when your discipline isn't talking. In that moment of personal silence, the recording is pure noise: the whirr of a laptop fan, the fizz of a heater, and the hiss of a microphone that does a very good job of picking upwardly room noise.

If yous'd like to effort this out, consider Brazenness, which is free and offers a de-noising plug-in. Another selection is the $149 SoundSoap. Adobe includes a de-noising effect with its audio-editing app Audition. As for me, for the last year or and so I've been using the $249 iZotope RX 5, which is a combination of audio utilities that let y'all de-racket, de-hum, and de-reverb sound.

Hither are some before-and-afterward samples. We'll commencement with a particularly noisy runway from my pal David J. Loehr, which may accept actually been recorded in a hotel room, not his usual location. From the waveform, you can already tell this is a noisy track: The big spikes are when David is talking, but when he's non talking in that location's nevertheless a pretty thick line. That'south the sign of groundwork racket. (At that place'south too a big empty gap in the middle; that's when David muted his microphone entirely.)

iZotope RX v also provides a 2nd way of visualizing sound, which is via an orange-tinted interface that indicates noises at specific frequencies. That's about visible across the bottom of the screen. Those solid bars are groundwork hums—they sit at specific frequencies and just proceed on making noise.

Nigh de-noising plug-ins will take intendance of background hums, merely iZotope RX 5 offers a separate de-hum plug-in that is particularly constructive at destroying those hums. To remove the hum, I select a portion of the audio that contains the hum and click the Learn button in the De-hum window. Then I select the entire track (or at least the portion of the runway that contains the hum) and click Process to remove the hum from the selected area. As you tin can see in the image below, later on I click Process the two orange bars at the bottom of the waveform take vanished from the selected portion of the audio file. That hum has vanished entirely.

While removing the background hum is a major part of the noise-removal puzzle, there'due south still other groundwork dissonance. That's why I'll now select a portion of audio and click Learn on the De-noise window. And so I select the entire rails (or the portion of information technology containing the dissonance I desire to remove) and click Process to remove the noise.

As you lot tin run across from the prototype below, the area I candy shows up with the thinnest of waveform lines and appears largely black, with no overlaid orangish speckles indicating noise. This "silent" part of the track is at present truly silent.

In truth, most of the "silent" portions of my guest's audio tracks aren't e'er heard by podcast listeners. Whether you use a dissonance gate or a Strip Silence feature like Logic Pro or Ferrite (that'south my arroyo), quiet portions of someone's audio tracks are automatically squelched.

The value in removing noise isn't making the quiet parts placidity—it'south making it so that the parts in which your panelists are talking don't also contain hums and other background noise. Even when someone'south talking, there are natural pauses through which the hums and dissonance can bleed through. If I can remove them from everybody'due south audio rail, y'all won't get distracted when the character of the sound changes dramatically every time someone else starts talking.

The screen shots from iZotope RX 5 are fun, but hearing is believing: Hither'due south a department of that rail from David Loehr, before and after I removed the hum and noise.

I mentioned to a higher place that iZotope RX v also includes a de-reverb effect. That's actually the primary reason I upgraded to iZotope from SoundSoap—some of my panelists have very echoey recording spaces. In time, perhaps they'll alter their recording prepare-upwardly and it won't be a trouble, only I'd similar to be able to suppress every bit much room repeat as I can in the meantime.

Musicians add reverb to tracks all the time, but the idea of removing reverb seems kind of crazy. In fact, information technology requires a whole lot of wacky mathematical modeling of sound disuse at various frequencies. But you know what? When it works, it'due south magical.

This Christmas, my friend James Thomson joined me (and David Loehr!) for a podcast about the "Doctor Who" Christmas Special. James couldn't employ his usual recording location, withal, because his mother in law was in town and was sleeping in that room. And so he recorded from his kitchen, which was not the ideal recording location. It was a bit echoey.

If you'd like to hear how James's original audio sounded like, what information technology sounded like after de-reverbing, and then what information technology sounded similar with de-noising added, here's a sample file.

Should aspiring podcasters run out and spend several hundred dollars for professional sound software? No. Start with Audacity or, if you're using Audience, the built-in de-noising features. But if you're interested in taking the next step—or you've got some brutal sound that yous need to ameliorate—you'd exist surprised at the quality of the results you tin can become with a little bit of time and some clever software.

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