Freesound Forums

Hello.
I have been submitting mostly nature sounds for over 10 years here and have been very happy with how they have been received and used by the community. While all of my sounds are good, they still have a
bit of "noise " in them that I would like to get rid of. I am almost certain many of you who use my sounds tweak them in Post anyway before you use them.

I have been trying lately to use Adobe Audition to " clean " them up, so to speak, BUT, as I have never been formally trained/instructed in how to use various parts of Audition like "Noise reduction", "compression/equalization", "filter and eq" "notch filer" "graphic equalizer" and others.
I have tried to teach myself and can't get the hang of it. Mostly when I try to get rid of hiss or car noise, I DO delete these unpleasant portions, BUT, digital artifacts become very annoying.

I find my real love is getting outside and doing the field recording with my high end gear - i.e. I have Sound Devices Recorders, various high end Sennheiser and Neumann microphones etc...

So, (1) Would anybody be interested in taking some of my existing recordings here on Freesound, clean them up and send them to me? OR, (2) If anybody uses Adobe Audition version 3.0, emailing me some brief instructions on how you clean up your nature audio?

I know this is a big ask, BUT, I want to take my audio to the next level.

Please PM me if interested.

Many Thanks.
kvgarlic (Kevin)

Hi Kevin,

As I have already written in my comments, I am a big fan of your recordings. The quality is high. Thanks for that.

I'll tell you that I'm not a fan of sound file cleaning at all. The traffic jam is what it is. As you hear it, I observed it.
Sometimes I snuck a little low out of the sound to create a (little bit) peace, but the recording quickly becomes very flat. My motto in this is; If you don't like it, just search the internet for a better sound recording. That will not be easy, I say arrogantly about my and your recordings.

If you still want to get started with a little bit of adjustment of your recordings, use the free program Audicity. Youtube is full of instructional videos on how to use it. From version 3.2 you can download real time plugins. so you can adjust your sound as you play.

this is a nice video tot start with.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UE6Hq2K0gQ8

It tkes time to lurn but you will be happy when you know how to handel the proramm

regards

Thanks Klankbeld for your very nice reply and glad that you continue to enjoy my recordings. I enjoy getting out the woods and very much enjoy capturing these wonderful sounds of our planet.

AND, I am relieved and glad to hear you are not a fan of cleaning recordings. Traditionally I don't like processing recordings either. It is just that when I watch movies, or good television dramas, I pay VERY close attention to the audio--particularly the background. Often I hear, what I would call, almost pristine audio. But I gotta realize the major studios I'm sure have equipment/software that costs MANY more times than what I use. I need to realize the importance of "recording it like I hear it" Great philosophy you have there.

I think also what bothers me sometimes about my recordings is the every present distant traffic noise. Let's face it, our world is full of combustion engines and it's almost hard to get away from them.
AND, I bet what is going on, is, when I am actually out in the woods recording, sure, I DO hear the traffic noise, BUT, my attention is more focused on listening to the " good " sounds that I am capturing and I most likely just tune out the " bad " sounds when I am actually out in the field with my gear. I am also busy looking around and seeing what there is to see, which most likely also causes me to also tune out more of the " bad " sounds.

Thanks again so much for your response, and as my audio recording journey continues, it is great to hear I am not the only one who doesn't feel the need to spend literally hours on the DAW processing.

Oh yes, I am very familiar with audacity. I've used it in the past, but got away from it when I bought Adobe Audition. I'll check out that link.

Have a good one, keep up the good work recording and listening and hearing.

Kegarlic

Before moving on to another program I can recommend the following Adacity link;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCTUwi7jTao

You will see that noise can also be removed with this program, although it is of course not Adobe.

I take the liberty of giving you some more tips that I have learned through trial and error.

When shooting nature, I study the environment on a map beforehand. I take the wind into account. For nature shots, it is important that you record sound against the wind with any traffic behind you. That saves a lot of post editing.
I seek cover from any slope or other shelter in the landscape.
that's it
Please upload the good recordings for us and I will be sure to listen.

klankbeeld

If you view the spectrum you can see where the nature is: >500Hz in this case ...

https://freesound.org/people/kvgarlic/sounds/659990/

Audacity (et al) allows spectral-editing: remove what you don't want from the spectrum, like in photo-shop
https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/spectral_selection.html#example

Thanks Timbre.

Now that you mention it, I think audacity can do that also. I'll give that a go.
It is much easier viewing the audio in Spectral Frequency Display. That way I can Easily see
what I want to cut out. Thanks for the help.