Topic: Background noise removal program/addon

[shadow-world]

Hello there.
I was just wondering if theres any specific program or addon which can remove or reduce near handclap and/or chatter near recording, got unlucky a couple of times when recording recently.

[anr]

You mention two different issues.

The solution to chatter usually involves a sharp stinging blow to the perpetrator's nose.

For localised claps I always use Sony's Noise Reduction Tool "Click and Crackle Removal", set to the "For Manually Fixing Short Sections" default.   It is perfect for what you describe, but be wary of using it on sections of normal applause, as opposed to when the braindead start to clap along with spoken intros or quiet parts of music.  I use this after EQ'ing, if only because many recording scenarios produce a noticeable roll-off in the clapping range, so EQ'ing after C&C tends to simply re-emphasise the click. 

Always keep a backup of the original because the above isn't foolproof and can create a "ripple" effect.  As the name implies "short sections" only.   

[shadow-world]

Thanks for reply, gonna have a look on that  program

[Shadow_7]

It's always easier to remove the sources of the noise at the point of capture.  Reflexion Filter, Elevation, Shock Mounts, Directional mics, Wind Screens, .....  Baring that I stumbled upon gnome_wave_cleaner fairly recently and it seems capable of noise removal.  Not claps and ambient content.  Audacity does a little bit, but not really that good IMO.  Baring some extended nyquist trickery.  Sox does a better job of noise removal.  But again not claps and ambient content and if your interface induces some irregular noise, sox does a good job of NOT removing that.  But you can use audacity's notch filter to bump those frequencies down in the mix.  If they're the high peaks, you can use audacity's hard limiter to tame them a bit.  But it doesn't remove them, just squishes their volume to a desired dB level.  And everything louder than that level.  And many means to an end.  But content is content, that gets to be some serious post processing to even try to remove those.  Baring an independent track that you could invert the phase of to cancel it out.

[guysonic]

Best 'noise reduction' programs work well if noises are either exactly (precision) repetitive, or constant random (hiss or for example, insect chatter).

Just applied (2-4 second) FFT sampled 60 cycle hum and cicada insect background noise into CEP's noise reduction feature.  Fine-tuned the amount of the noise sample to the acoustic orchestra performance so the NR did not suck the life out of the recording.   Completely removed the 60 Hz hum, and greatly reduced the insect chatter so not to be disturbing.   

Took several tuning steps for each section of the concert, and had to use different FFT samples taken during otherwise silent portions as the insect sound varied to be very loud at the concert's start, but subsided greatly to hardly be an issue at the end.   So each performance section needed it's own custom FFT NR sample applied for getting accurate software solutions.