I often get rid of the ambient noise. Many of us do. I use the Waves NS-1 program quite a bit because it works well and is fast and easy, but it doesn't work well with certain types of noise like a low hum. In those cases I use the Sony NR program or iZotope RX. The NS-1 works well most of the time though and has less of that weird phase shifty sound that the Sony and iZotope programs have. I started a thread about the NS-1 program a while back that you might find interesting:

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=829936

I just wanted to mention that I leave the ambient noise in if it is interesting and adds to the scene. For instance, traffic sounds on a street interview or restaurant ambience sound good and there is no reason to fight it. Background hum from a refrigerator or air conditioner though ... gone!

It might be a lot easier to put a gate on it so that normal speaking gets passed through untouched but everything else gets doesn't.

Mike

Gates usually sound terrible. Abrupt changes in noise level like you get from gating sound far worse than just leaving the noise floor alone.

Audacity is free and the latest version does a decent job of noise removal - without the need for a steep learning curve. :-)

What exactly is the noise? Do this, normalize the part where no one is talking, then you will be able to hear that your son is hearing.

If it's just random noise like air conditioning, the noise reduction will work well, but don't over do the noise reduction because if it's too quiet, it won't seem real. Use noise reduction wisely.

On the other hand, if there is some particular frequency, such as a high-pitched ring, or AC 60hz hum, then you might want to deal with that differently, by using a notch filter, or hum removal program.

The Sony Noise Reduction 2.0 is one of the best I have used. In the past I have used Sonic Solution No-noise, a $10,000 plugin, and Sony was better. Later I bought the Waves X-noise, and Sony was still slightly better, but different. I ended up using them both to complement one another.

Today I use Izotope RX. It is absolutely amazing. But it's expensive.

My recommendation would be Sony based on value. You need to pay a lot more with other plugins to get the same results or better.

That said, I have not tried the Waves NS1. Waves give your a trial period, so you might as well try them all.

~Jay

Thought I'd give NS-1 a trial. Sheeeesh...dealing with their website is like arm wrestling! Very poor. Tells me I'm already demoing it...before I've downloaded it. Then won't let me download it again! The point of that is?? I've contacted them, but not sure it's worth the effort to be honest. Their contact form actually states that "sales or tech support enquiries will NOT receive a reply". Somebody's up their own a***.

Sorry I should have warned you that Waves sucks to deal with. But they make outstanding products, so I've learned to deal with it.

Whenever I build a new PC, I usually plan on at least half a day to get my Waves stuff working again.

~Jay

I've used the Track EQ with the "60 Hz hum notch using 4 stack filters" FX template to eliminate a variety of unwanted noise in the quiet spaces. If it's a steady noise, like a motor, or the tape drive on your camera, you can probably find the frequency and eliminate it. Start with the template by moving the bandwidth slider out to 1.0 and then move the frequency slider slowly, usually higher, until the unwanted sound goes away. Then reduce the bandwith down as small as possible so you are only taking out a .2 or .3 slice. You will probably have to readjust the frequency before you get things down to a .3 on the bandwidth. I usually leave the Gain set at Inf. when working with a band. Sometimes playing with the high shelf can be effective but in this case keep the gain very low. You have a total of 4 filters to work with inside this template so after you've killed one unwanted sound use the other filters to go after another noise. This may not be as simple as the Sony noise filter but it's worked well for me... and it's already loaded in Vegas.

If the troublesome noise is too high in frequency for you to hear but your son's young ears can hear it, then try slowing things down by a factor of two or more. The voices will sound funny of course, but you are listening for noises.

Around the age of 25, males start to lose sensitivity to high frequencies. By the time a man reaches 50 or so, their high frequency sensitivity at 8khz may be down 20db or more.

Women (of any age) and children don't suffer this loss.

Here is a very rudimentary high-frequency hearing test. It's probably best to take this using relatively decent headphones or earbuds. It isn't calibrated in any way, so it is no substitute for a real auditory exam.

http://www.noiseaddicts.com/2009/03/can-you-hear-this-hearing-test/

Here is a pretty comprehensive scientific paper (in /PDF form) on age-related hearing loss:

http://saha.searle.northwestern.edu/bibcat/pdf/877.pdf

Pardon?

Yup, hearing loss and presbyopia (lack of near-focus ability). I was proud as a college undergrad that I could "hear" 22KHz; now, 10 is about my limit.

But now I get free coffee at Wendy's, so the news is not all grim.

Gates usually sound terrible. Abrupt changes in noise level like you get from gating sound far worse than just leaving the noise floor alone.

Depends on the level of the noise floor and, I assume, the gate settings.

If you can hear the noise when folks are speaking then, yes, it is VERY annoying (to me at least) to hear that noise disappear, appear, disappear, appear, disappear and so on all through the event.

I have given up listening to a podcast that was so afflicted .. I just could not stand it anymore.

Absolute silence is often 'noticeable' and not in a good way. Normally BG noise is inserted in post to real-ize the program..
Noise gates are usually annoying on production audio tracks, however if one does needs to attenuate low level audio, an 'expander' can be a better choice than a harsh sounding open-close gate. There are many third-party 'expander' plugs available (free and otherwise) One may also use the Sony Graphic Dynamics plug to 'draw' an expander curve. (with a compression curve as well if so desired.

Finally got it downloaded. (Explanation for problems "we have a new website on the go") Will have a play and report back.

I hope that you will be able to report back soon, as I also plan to D/L the demo (when I get home from my full time gig tonight). If it works as well as the online video on their site demonstrates, and since I showed this to my son last night and he told me that the sound they are masking is the same as he hears on his wedding soundtrack, then I'm sold!!

It's a lot of work, but the best results I get for ambient removal (on straight dialog) is by copying the entire dialog track, then on the copied track, edit the dialog out phrase by phrase, put quick fades on the remaining ambient sound clips that overlap the edges of the dialog on the original track, then reverse the phase of the track. Yes, I know it's a lot of work and might not be worth it on many projects - but you then have the ability to either remove or just reduce the ambience by adjusting the volume level of the new track - without introducing artifacts from NR plugins, gates, etc.

I can't find Sony NR on my PC. I currently use Vegas Pro 12, but do not have any plug-ins left over from Vegas 8-11 due to my having to install-uninstall V12 when I had some issues after first installing it (the memory-GPU fiasco). Do I have to shell out a few hundred more dollars and purchase Sound Forge to get it, or can loyal Vegas users download it somewhere off of a Sony site?

If one removes background noise things tend to sound most unnatural.

Once upon a time I have to remove some obtrusive background noise, and found I needn't to add a track of less obtrusive (but similar level) ambient noise to make it sound real again.

geoff

Atom12, your procedure is functionally identical to adding a noise gate and controlling it manually.

You could accomplish exactly the same thing without a second track by adding a volume envelope.

I D/L'd the NS-1 demo last night and gave it a quick try. I also compare it to utilizing the Noise Gate plug-in. While the Noise Gate could not be adjusted to blend the quieter vocals with the loud ones (it either would mask the background noise or cut out the quieter vocals), but there was no adjustment where I could achieve medium ground. The quick test that I gave the clip with NS-1 appeared to have resolved the problem. I now need to run this by my son and his wife, and if they say that the NS-1 plug-in resolves their issues then I will purchase it. Anyone wanting to try the NS-1 demo, FYI it is a VST plug-in that must be installed from the preferences tab then tab to VST Effects, and be aware that you must set up an account even just to access the demo. Also, the demo download indicates that your are D/Ling the TDM (standalone?) version, but there is a disclaimer at the top that states that Product marked TDM include demos for both TDM and Native. I couldn't figure out how to use the TDM demo, but I really did not need it as the native version seamlessly works as a VST audio plug-in.