VHS tape hiss: What is best software to remove noise?

[Wile_E]

I'm capturing VHS with a Canopus ADVC-300 and JVC HRS-9911U. The tapes that have a Hi-Fi soundtrack are okay. But tapes that only have normal VHS audio have tape hiss.

What is the best software that analyzes audio for hiss? I don't want to just apply a filter to reduce high frequencies, because that makes everything sound muffled. I want to be able to boost the high frequency as much as possible, without having hiss.

This is what I find odd... My VCR is hooked to my TV, using cheap coaxial input. Audio sounds fine through my TV, and I can't hear any hiss. But when capturing through RCA jacks, audio has hiss. Why is hiss less noticeable through coaxial output? I tried another VCR, and it's the same thing, so not a VCR problem.

[Tommyknocker]

Try the noise filters on Gold Wave. It has a hiss removal preset.

[Wile_E]

Thanks, but I've tried Gold Wave, and it removed high frequencies too, and made it muffled. I just read about Sound Forge 7 having noise reduction that actually supposed to only erase hiss, and leave everything else. I'll try that program tonight.

[lordsmurf]

http://www.digitalfaq.com/dvdguides/restoration/audio/intro.htm
http://www.digitalfaq.com/dvdguides/restoration/audio/soundforge/soundforge.htm
http://www.digitalfaq.com/dvdguides/restoration/audio/dartpro/dartpro.htm

[vhelp]

...
This is what I find odd... My VCR is hooked to my TV, using cheap coaxial input. Audio sounds fine through my TV, and I can't hear any hiss. But when capturing through RCA jacks, audio has hiss. Why is hiss less noticeable through coaxial output? I tried another VCR, and it's the same thing, so not a VCR problem.

Yeah.., instead of resorting to "Filtering Out" hiss noise, i'd like to know what
is causing this hiss too

..anyone ??

Cheers,
-vhelp

[Wile_E]

oh great lord smurf, thanks for the links and guides. I read a couple of them tonight, and they were helpful. I only have SoundForge Audio Studio, so I downloaded the demo of SoundForge 7. It did work to some extent, but I could tell it was muffling the high-end too much.

I then tried Adobe Audition, and was pretty amazed. I selected a blank spot on the tape, that just had hiss. Then I ran the noise reduction and made a profile. Used the profile for the whole file, and it worked! It got rid of the annoying hiss, without hurting the high-end frequencies. I would not think this would be possible, but it seemed to work well. Tonight I will try it on some other VHS tapes.

[NamPla]

Cool Edit Pro 2 (now Adobe Audition) works wonders for me:

[lordsmurf]

but I could tell it was muffling the high-end too much..

Not really. All you have to do is a high restore filter if this happens. You're juggling frequencies, nothing more. Some of my filters do this in combo, some not.

What is causing it is the tape.

[greymalkin]

Audition has alot to offer without a huge learning curve..you can really do wonders with an audio tape/vhs tape. I looked around and tried alot of audio editing software but none of the ones i tried had the features AND ease of use of audition (CEP at the time).

I usually capture to the pc, do any hacking I might do to the video, then use the "get audio from video" feature in audition to polish up before compressing to DD2.0 and re-introducing in the authoring process. Theres probably fabulous applications that will do that all for you, however, but this is what works well for me...