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Noise Reduction

U

Utopia

I would like to know what your favorite plug-in or hardware unit is for reducing noise on audio recordings.

I am looking at trying out the Waves C4 but I know there could be better options than this.

I do own the Waves X-Noise, but it creates too many "space monkeys" to be that useful beyond ducking out ambient noise under music - so if there is no music, you always tend to hear the digital artifacts added by this plug-in.

Also, is anyone familiar with the Cedar systems and do you have any information on the plug-in version of Cedar's nosie reduction?

I am very interested in what you all are using.
 
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NR for production sound is very different than for music. It is also very different between the indie and "Hollywood" levels. At the Hollywood level NR is usually performed during rerecording. It is not unusual for several different NR programs to be used simultaneously. Hey, they have the track counts and processing power to pull it off. At the indie level you use what you can afford.

I personally use a parametric EQ in notch filter mode, Digidesign DINR, and SoundSoap Pro and I have Izotope RX on my to buy list; I've used it at other facilities and it's pretty good for the price.

One of the "tricks" is to do a little at a time, don't try to do it all at once. Since I don't have the processing power I have to print it every time I do an NR pass. I've done as many as six passes. On my current project I had one really bad scene where I did SSP, DINR, DINR, EQ, SSP and DINR (I think that's right....). That's just the way it worked out; it sometimes takes hours to get the right combo, and even then the results can be equivocal.

Just keep in mind that you are not trying to eliminate the noise completely between lines of dialog, you are attempting to reduce the impact of the noise on the dialog. The dialog will be checkerboarded or dipped and room tone will be filling the gaps.

So far I have not had an opportunity to work with Cedar. I have a friend who does forensic audio and he has one of the pricier Cedar systems. His business, however, is to make conversations intelligible, not "movie" quality; he did the 9/11 tapes of the fire and police departments, for example.
 
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