From what I've seen of it it doesn't have any more than VV and/or SF with the noise reduction plug in.

What I'm really looking for is something akin to some of the Dolby noise reduction systems, in other words dynamic eq.

Dolby noise reduction and it's ilk require that the audio signal be encoded at the time of recording so that it may be decoded upon playback. If the noise reduction wasn't used when the tape was recorded then it can't be used during playback. You will need something like the SONY Noise Reduction plugin to process the audio after the fact.

I well understand how Dobly noise reduction worked. It increased the level of the highs so that when it was played back they were attenuated and the noise being mostly highs went down with them.

What I am looking for is a dyanamic eq, ie the eq settings depend on the level. Something LIKE what the old Dolby systems did. A common trick was to actually apply Dolby noise reduction without playing it back with Dolby sort of.

Sony Noise Reduction plug in will NOT work with noise, noise by definition has equal energy at all frequencies (white) or equal energy per octave (pink). trying to remove it by notch filters is useless. The trick is however that tape hiss is far more noticable at the high end. A high shelf can get rid of it but at the same time kill of all the usefull frequencies. Dynamic eq should be able to attenuate the highs during quiet sections whne the loss of hfreq will not be noticeable and leave the hfreq in during loud passages when the hiss is not noticeable.

"in other words dynamic eq."
Vegas v4.0 and Sound Forge have automatible FX's. This should give you the ability to have a dynamic eq. It's relatively simple to setup.

1. Add your audio to a track
2. Add the Sonic Foundry EQ into the track insert, this plugin supports automation.
3. with the plugin open click on "Configure FX automation" button
4.Check the parameters that you would like to automate
5. hit ok
6. An envelope/envelopes will appear on top of the audio
7. Add points to this envelope by double clicking on it.
8. Drag the points up and down to shape the envelope that will correspond with the automated parameter.

Another thing you might want to try, which might be a lot easier and give you good results. Seeing that you mentioned the noise is only noticeble in the quiet areas where no one is speaking, you could use a volume envelope. This works the same as I described above with the automation envelopes.
I would add points to the volume envelope create fade up/down points where there is only noise, and reduce the noise volume.

You said:

"Sony NoiseReduction plug in will NOT work with noise, noise by definition has equal energy at all frequencies (white) or equal energy per octave (pink). trying to remove it by notch filters is useless. The trick is however that tape hiss is far more noticable at the high end. A high shelf can get rid of it but at the same time kill of all the usefull frequencies. Dynamic eq should be able to attenuate the highs during quiet sections whne the loss of hfreq will not be noticeable and leave the hfreq in during loud passages when the hiss is not noticeable."

This is incorrect. I use it daily in professional broadcast production. It does work on noise. It would be the tool of choice for what you are doing.

RiRo

Those are the definitions of White Noise and Pink Noise. There are many other (should i say infinitely other) types of noise, and most of these are very well handled by SONY's noise reduction plugin. I've found it very effective at removing 60Hz line noise, air conditioner noise, ceiling fan noise, tape hiss, rain, motor noise, vinyl noise, even some wind noise. It's not entirely a notch filter. It does actually search for repeating waveform patterns as well as frequency characteristics.

In fact, I've found it works best on tape hiss even though it work very well on many other types of noise as Chienworks mentions.

Tape his is no fuss, capture noiseprint, very little adjusting, excellent results, no negative elements, move on.

MJ

I'd like to thanks you all for the input, it's certainly much easier to evaluate a solution with input from peol who've actually done it than from what gets written about a product by the marketing guys.

What I'm looking to do is to improve the audio from old VHS tapes. Theres ben heaps of discussion about the video side of it but as always with video audio doesn't get much of a mention.

As this is a commercial venture and customers never like to pay and a lot of the material just isn't worth spending that much money on anyway I do need a soultion that doesn't involve a lot of time to use. I'd sure like to have the time (read customers money) to put more into it. So what I'm trying to do is do the job at the same price point as others but compete by offering a better result.

I've learnt quite a bit, the SF with NR aproach sounds more capable than I thought it was, don't know how much luck I'll have getting a clean noise print and I had serious doubts about how well this will work with this kind of noise. I did know it works a treat with repeitive noise such as hum and even air conditioners.

What i had looked at in VV were the multiband dynamics. That looked fairly promising but I couldn't quite fathom how to configure it do what I wanted to achieve.

Me think I'm going to invest in SF shortly and the NR plugin. Even if it doesn't solve this problem I'm having to deal with anough of the kinds of problems that I know for sure it will fix to justify th expense.

Thanks again all for your advice, much appreciated

farss, if you need to save some money, you can use NR directly in Vegas. You don't have to get Sound Forge. It's not quite as convenient, but it does work.

The Sony Noise Reduction is the best answer to this solution. This will work best with Tape Hiss noise. I've used it many times, removing cassette hiss noise with great results. Getting a noise print from your VHS tapes should not be a problem, unless you're telling us, that every inch of the tape has been recorded on, and there is absolutely no silence between the recording. This I highly doubt, I'm sure there's some room at the end of the tapes. I have run into this problem on a cassette before, where there's no room to capture a noise print. Using a similar type of cassette which is blank, will get you by in a pinch also.

I must admit I'm not always the best are reading documentation but for NR it is highly recommended. It is full of little tips which really help. As far as "Dolby type" noise reduction a snipped from the help might clarify a little;

"The envelope, not the noiseprint graph, is used in the algorithm when separating the noise signal from the source: any signals below the envelope are treated as noise. Therefore, the envelope contour should be above the noiseprint graph if the desired frequency noise is to be removed."

It is sort of a gate per frequency point. You can tweak them yourself if you like. I think this is the ultimate multi-band dynamics farss is looking for.

Pretty clever actually.

Larry

Now that is very interesting, much smarter than I thought it was.

The problem with getting the noise print from another tape is that oftenly these are VHS copies of VHS tapes, no doubt some or a lot of the noise came from the recording one generation back.

This a great thread. Thanks all contributors.