Topic: Hints for using cleanup aud recordings in RX?????

[daze]

Thanks for starting this thread.  I find it's a lot of trial and error, and what works for one set of screams/woots/whistles doesn't necessarily work for the next . . . embedded screams and woots and whistles are my nemisis.  I need to start working at this more regularly and will share any revelations here.

I agree with you on all your points. I find that I have to try a few approaches let's say on the screams and hoots during the music information. For me, most success is using the paintbrush to highlight the offending intrusion. Sometimes, attenuating the main/loudest incident in the spectrogram and replacing eliminates any trace. Other times I'll have to select several harmonics, replace, attenuate and attenuate again. Yet, some other times partials and noise rather than replace works best.

The whistles, since they are so high up it don't seem as difficult. I'll select all the whistles, then use the harmonic tool to get all of them. Replace and attenuate and that usually removes everything. If there are any leftover artifacts, I either replace them or simply attenuate. After you do this after quite a few times, you get a feel for what you want to try next.

It sounds like you and me are working with basic two track audience recordings so there's a limited amount of how we can clean things up without individual instrument tracks. Sometimes there are still some artifacts left remaining but for me, if I'm listening to a nice spacey jam and hear a very, very muffled kind of sound versus a loud scream - it's worth the time and effort for me. Because this is all very time consuming.

Yes, I'm dealing with the basic two-track audience recordings.  I use the paintbrush most of the time; the magic lasso never really seems to grab all of the offending noise, especially if it's a screaming frown shape, embedded in applause or music or artist banter.  The harmonic tool sometimes grabs what I want, but not always; and after each attempted repair I listen carefully with headphones or monitor speakers to make sure I didn't make things worse, as sometimes less is more.  I really need to devote more time to doing this and honing my skills.  I'm also trying to keep more careful notes about what does and doesn't work in different types of situations.  I also think I need to start working on easier recordings at first, otherwise I tend to get overwhelmed and spend hours getting through 10 minutes of music.

There have been some instances where I've had some good results, dealing with the embedded screams/whistles/hoots, breaking it up into segments:  so instead of paintbrushing the entire frown (or whatever) shape, I deal with each slant and angle separately.  Time-consuming but sometimes it works and I don't end up with the dreaded whooshing artifact sound.

[nassau73]

I don't really understand the Instant Process portion of that website either.  Don't see what it is telling you to do that would make anything faster.

Basically, check the box at the bottom of the spectrogram that says "Instant Process". From the dropdown menu to the right, you can select things like attenuate, declick, etc. Then, when you highlight a selection with whatever editing tool you want to apply, RX will perform that action immediately.

So for example, Let's say you are going to use the paintbrush tool and your work flow process might be to highlight a scream then click "Render" in the Spectral Repair window that you have open. That's alot of mousing back and forth if you're doing it over and over again. With Instant Process, you would paint over the scream and it would attenuate immediately. So instead of back and forth with selecting and rendering, you simply highlight, highlight the next one, the next etc.

[nassau73]

Yes, I'm dealing with the basic two-track audience recordings.  I use the paintbrush most of the time; the magic lasso never really seems to grab all of the offending noise, especially if it's a screaming frown shape, embedded in applause or music or artist banter.  The harmonic tool sometimes grabs what I want, but not always; and after each attempted repair I listen carefully with headphones or monitor speakers to make sure I didn't make things worse, as sometimes less is more.  I really need to devote more time to doing this and honing my skills.  I'm also trying to keep more careful notes about what does and doesn't work in different types of situations.  I also think I need to start working on easier recordings at first, otherwise I tend to get overwhelmed and spend hours getting through 10 minutes of music.

There have been some instances where I've had some good results, dealing with the embedded screams/whistles/hoots, breaking it up into segments:  so instead of paintbrushing the entire frown (or whatever) shape, I deal with each slant and angle separately.  Time-consuming but sometimes it works and I don't end up with the dreaded whooshing artifact sound.

Yeah, sometimes it takes a long time to get through short segments if there's alot to clean up in that segment. And yes again, trial and error teaches all of us something new as time goes by. The list of changes that RX lists to the right of the spectrogram is pretty invaluable 'cause we can make an edit, listen back and see if it worked. I find that many times when that "whooshing" artifact shows up on relistening I can go back several steps and try a different idea.

You mention breaking a noise into segments. That can be very helpful. For example, let's say you've got some loud talking going on. In the spectrogram you can often see the harmonics of the talker's voice. Interesting is that you can highlight the primary instance of the talker, hit the harmonic tool for several harmonics to be selected and apply your edit. However, I've found that only "some" alternating harmonics will be selected. So then, I have to go in and get the alternating harmonics. Basically - doing the segment thing you are talking about. And as you allude to - sometimes all that work makes it sound worse so you just have to leave things in a not "just exactly perfect" state (as Bob Weir would say :-)