Remove Hiss from Audio with removing or destroying the Audio

[Deter]

Hi,

Many old tapes, 8-tracks, Records or even video have tons of hiss in the recording.

Haven't really found the best method to do this. Have tried taking sample clips of the audio and removing it that way, it seems to remove too much from the audio.

Basic noise dumping works some of the time, it doesn't get all the hiss. It will still dull the recording a bit.

My question is, what is the best way to remove hiss from the audio while keeping the source audio in tact. Having it sound natural, not dull, compressed, missing depth, being cut off in anyway.

Let me put it this way, really have a hard time listening to an mp3 file cause of the compression / missing segments in the audio; sometimes with NR this can happen.

Now have also tried using this feature in SoundForge, in the few cases lowing the noise floor, created weird effects in the audio, and even one time created clipping in the audio.

Please help!



Basic Noise Dumping

[Wolfen]

I'm not familiar with this Audacity (it's free) but hear it's a good program, others can help you with it.

[mike20021969]

Provide an audio sample

[Cornucopia]

You don't chip away at a block of stone with a sledgehammer to get to a sculpture, you use finer tools - over and over again!

Scott

[aedipuss]

buy/rent/borrow better source material.

[Cornucopia]

But that's just it, some stuff on those older mediums are ONLY available there: out-of-print(?) material never picked up for CD release, bootlegged live concerts from fans, local artists w/ no record label...

Scott

<edit>Here's an example: old 2trk Reel-to-Reel master digitized & restored. (Don't worry, it's MY old band - I own the copyright to the recording). It's not perfect, but it holds up pretty well!

[Deter]

aedipuss, actually have the source material, on some of the stuff.

Mike, a general sample would be too vague because every recording is different per say.

Lets say you are dealing with TV footage or a VHS tape that has a lot of hiss, because the sound was basic TV you can get away with something like noise dumping. If it was your favorite concert or video from MTV, it is not going to cut it.

AVISYTH filter? to clean out a level of hiss.

For example lets take an FLV file because you are dealing with horrible compression a massive noise dump on a 4 band equalizer will sometimes work, but than you have to do other things to bring life back in to the recording. If it is just voice you can work around it, but with music it is not going to work.

Lets take a cassette tape from the mid 80ties, with a tons of tape hiss, what do you do to fix that up and not mess up the source recording, that is why I am asking to see what people use or how they do it.

[mike20021969]

Lets take a cassette tape from the mid 80ties, with a tons of tape hiss, what do you do to fix that up and not mess up the source recording, that is why I am asking to see what people use or how they do it.

I've used Adobe Audition and Sound Rescue 2.0/2.1 successfully on audio tape (and vinyl).

Sound Rescue uses a DeNoiser slider to adust the profile value (the profile is at a given preset value). This can be effective if you don't over do it.

With Adobe Audition, you can capture a noise profile of the hiss (during a silence).
Then you can preview the end result and make adjustments with Noise Reduction Level slider to fine tune, before applying to the selected portion of audio.

To be honest, tape hiss isn't really all that bad - unless your recording was recorded too low in the first place.

[aedipuss]

for cassette hiss, i'd look for the album on cd. if it's that's not available i'd buy it on vinyl. only thing worse than cassette is 8-track. nothing was released on cassette only.