eliminating background noise from a recorded device

[leon]

Hi Guys, a friend of mine has a recoding of a person speaking, however there is so much background noise that it is very hard to work out what is said.

Is there anyway, and/or software around to enhance the voice and get rid of some of the background noise,

Any suggestions or help would be much appreciated.

Leon

[rogerco (Roger)]

There is software Leon, I was once in ham radio and used it but its been a while so I can't pin point it at the moment, have you tried Googling it? Look into ham radio. It depends a bit on the type of noise, if its a steady hum from electrical noise its easy to get rid of, likewise if its a floor of noise and you have good signal above you can simply cut it out, something like removing light pollution by cutting all pixels below a certain value. If its random noise such as people at a party its much harder to get rid of.

I remember using a program where it displayed the sound as a wave form. You picked a point in it where there wasn't an signal you wanted and selected whatever sound was there (the noise) then told the program to remove that pattern from the rest of the recording. We used in preparing weekly broadcasts as it was just about impossible to get a totally quiet background without a recording studio. Some of the video (and sound) production software might have it built in these days.

Good luck

[killswitch (Edison)]

Simple way is to use Noise reduction in Adobe Audition or Audacity by capturing a noise profile.

You just need to select a few seconds where no one is speaking (noise only) and it can be subtracted for the rest of the track..

If the quality of the speakers are bad to begin with theres only so much noise reduction can do.

[rogerco (Roger)]

In ham radio there are noise cancelling speakers that have filters built into them that we use to make speech more readable on noisy bands.

[leon]

Many thanks guys at least i will do a little more research, thanks for giving me a starting point.

Leon

[Baddad (Marty)]

Hi Leon,

Adobe Audition is the updated name for "Cool Edit Pro". Also Sound Forge will do the job. Wavelab is another.

I have used all three. Adobe A. or Cool Edit is easiest to use. There used to be tutorials on the internet on how to use it.

Cheers