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89: Noises, Gates, Filters and Sneak Peaks

Administrator, 01 February 2008, 6 comments
Categories: Podcasts

Mark and Bob at PABColoured text throws us off course, but we learn how to use a phone in this episode!

PODCASTERS ACROSS BORDERS

(here’s a sneak peak at some of the PAB presenters)

EVENTS

CANADAPODCASTS.CA

PROMOS and PROFILES

TALK OF THE WEEK

EXTRO AND CONTACT INFO

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (26.8MB)

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Comments

6 Responses, Leave a Reply
  1. Collective Productions » Blog Archive » Tristan and Dan at Podcasters Across Borders.
    01 February 2008, 3:31 pm

    [...] Tristan will be presenting An Introduction to Video Craft, which should serve as a very basic introduction to working with video, from shot composition to b-roll to editing. In the PAB announcement on Canadian Podcast Buffet, Mark Blevis points out that this lecture will be all craft and “no skills.” He’s both partially right and completely hilarious for saying so. [...]

  2. TimothyPilgrim
    04 February 2008, 10:42 am

    I nice segment showing the effects of gates and filters. However, I don’t entirely agree with our hosts. While the gate garbles some of the words, the noise filter does not sound bad; it’s quite listenable in fact. I think that too much was placed on the “naturalness” and “air sucked out of the room” of the sound. I don’t even consider those important in my podcast listening experiences – I’m interested in content. If I can get the content in a good form, that’s fine with me. That said, if I were editing, I’d probably go with the unaltered clip simply because it’s much less work. :)

  3. Bob Goyetche
    04 February 2008, 10:53 am

    You’re right Tim, it is a lot less work, and that’s probably why I lean that way too. I agree that the filter did the least amount of “damage”, In a scratchier audio example, I’d be tempted to filter instead of gate too..

  4. Stevie Z
    10 February 2008, 2:10 pm

    Great segment on the gates/filters thing guys. I agree that sometimes audio that’s TOO perfect starts to sound kinda weird and unnatural.
    Another thing I’ve heard examples of that sometimes works is using an EQ to either boost the frequencies that the human voice resides in, or if it’s a high-pitched static or hiss or something, sometimes you can cut those frequencies to clean things up as well. I haven’t had a chance to try method myself, but I heard that it can work fairly well.

  5. Mark
    10 February 2008, 7:39 pm

    I recommend cutting the “noisy frequencies” before boosting the frequencies the human voice resides in. It’s best to remove the undesirable stuff than try on have the desirable stuff overpower it — you’ll end up with a very busy recording that has competing elements.

  6. Rob (Purl Diving's "Tech Guy")
    12 February 2008, 10:57 pm

    If there are some predominant frequencies to the noise e.g. 60 Hz hum and harmonics, or background hiss with most of its energy peaking in a particular band, I often make use of Audacity’s notch filter plug-in.

    You need to play around with the frequency (obviously…) but also the width of the notch — usually (but not always) a narrower (higher Q) notch works better for reducing these kinds of noise without significantly altering the sound of the voice or other content.

    Sometimes a wider notch is called for — you just have to use your ears and do some trial-and-error fiddling to get the best balance between removing the offending frequency and altering the character of the content.

    Oh, and I forgot to mention using the Analyze > Plot Spectrum tool in Audacity to pick out the frequencies that are causing the problems. It’s easiest to do if you have some “silence” to sample so the peaks stand out, but even if you can only sample within content you can sometimes pick out the noise peaks.

    But the best solution, of course, is not to record the noise in the first place! ;-)

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