The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
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  1. #1

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    I had some annoying background noise on my guitar recording (not sure if it was some kind of interference, or just circuitry noise from something). In the past I have used the Audacity noise removal effect which is not bad, but it doesn’t really remove noise completely. (Well it can, but then it starts to mess up your audio with artefacts).

    Anyway as I now use Reaper, I thought I’d see if it comes with a noise reduction tool. Nothing obvious came up in the FX list, so I googled it, and found the following (it uses the ReaFIR tool in Reaper). So I tried it, and it worked perfectly. No annoying parameter values to fiddle with (unlike Audacity), and it removed all the noise, while leaving the guitar sound completely intact, at least to my ears.

    I’ve only tried it on a guitar track so far, but for that it has worked perfectly.


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    The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
     
  3. #2

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    Yes!
    That's Ken Theriot. (Himself a singer/songwriter.) I found that video helpful when I stumbled across it. I've since bookmarked it. I've watched a lot of his videos. Not as in-depth as Kenny Gioia but I'm not ready for in-depth yet. ;o)

    I've used it on vocal tracks too. For me, it's more needful there, as I am working in a small room that is NOT soundproofed, so there is often some incidental noise---a fan, a faint electrical hum, or just the rattling of a lyric sheet while waiting to start a vocal---that needs to be dealt with.

    What's great about this method is that it applies to the whole track at once.

  4. #3

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    Wow thanks for sharing!

  5. #4

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    A heads up to consider on this one. I've used the ReaFir plug in for noise reduction for a while and it just became an automatic process for me. Unfortunately when I started to try to master some of those tracks I found some nasty artifacts when I listened with headphones and some volume. Using the process of elimination, it turned out that it was the noise reduction problem that was the source of those problems. I just figured this out minutes ago so I don't have any solutions yet but I thought I'd let you know abo the issues that I'm having.

  6. #5

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    Quote Originally Posted by Jim Soloway
    A heads up to consider on this one. I've used the ReaFir plug in for noise reduction for a while and it just became an automatic process for me. Unfortunately when I started to try to master some of those tracks I found some nasty artifacts when I listened with headphones and some volume. Using the process of elimination, it turned out that it was the noise reduction problem that was the source of those problems. I just figured this out minutes ago so I don't have any solutions yet but I thought I'd let you know abo the issues that I'm having.
    If you're hearing clicks and pops it may be that you're overtaxing your CPU. 1st thing I would try is to change your buffer size to really high (click on those numbers at the top right of your screen, select ASIO configurations from the menu). Might as well set buffer size to 2048 as latency isn't an issue when mixing, of course you'll want to reset to your lower buffer size when recording. See if that does the trick.

  7. #6

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    This is also helpful with fan noise from a computer if you are recording close to it with mics. But generally it depends on what you are recording for. For demos and youtube these plugins work good enough. For better quality though you really need a quiet room, and that's not always possible..

  8. #7

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    Quote Originally Posted by fep
    If you're hearing clicks and pops it may be that you're overtaxing your CPU. 1st thing I would try is to change your buffer size to really high (click on those numbers at the top right of your screen, select ASIO configurations from the menu). Might as well set buffer size to 2048 as latency isn't an issue when mixing, of course you'll want to reset to your lower buffer size when recording. See if that does the trick.
    Thanks. I'll give it a go. I keep thinking that it's time for a better computer. Maybe this will be the catalyst.

  9. #8

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    Quote Originally Posted by Jim Soloway
    A heads up to consider on this one. I've used the ReaFir plug in for noise reduction for a while and it just became an automatic process for me. Unfortunately when I started to try to master some of those tracks I found some nasty artifacts when I listened with headphones and some volume. Using the process of elimination, it turned out that it was the noise reduction problem that was the source of those problems. I just figured this out minutes ago so I don't have any solutions yet but I thought I'd let you know abo the issues that I'm having.
    I’ve found that is often the problem with noise reduction, above a certain point it can cause strange artefacts, but below that point it doesn’t always do much.

    As it happens I tried the ReaFir tool on a noisy digitised copy I had made from a vinyl jazz record, and it didn’t work at all well, it made weird noises as you describe.

    Yet on a guitar track I recorded in Reaper (which had some annoying noise), it worked perfectly. So I guess it just works better on some types of signal than others. Maybe the more complex sound of a whole group on the jazz record was too much for it, whereas a track featuring just a guitar was ok.

  10. #9

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    Experimented a bit with it last night. It does better on some noises than others and even on different passages of the noise. Sometimes it generates weird noises, sometimes it’s okay.

    In general it took away quite a lot of brilliance of the track (acoustic steelstring guitar) imho.

    But it can be useful, especially if you carefully record the noise first to get a good sample ;-)

  11. #10

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    If the Reaper tool isn’t doing the trick, the Audacity noise reduction is not bad. If you read the help page and play around with the parameters, you can get a reasonable result. Although I find it can still leave some of the noise behind during the actual notes (as it were).

    You can apply it to the reaper wav file (export back onto the same file) and the change will be picked up in Reaper. Of course this is a permanent change, so it would be worth making a safe copy of the track in Reaper first.