Can Adaptive Noise Reduction ever be trusted?

Question

I am making my way through 52 files/chapters of an audiobook, fixing rough patches, removing whistles, sibilance, and mouth noises.

I have been doing this in the boutique fashion -- every single action is executed by me. I have eschewed processing because of its tendency to take the warmth and human quality out of the voice. On files with the Adaptive Noise Reduction applied, there is a maddening high-pitch whine under the dialogue, and some very bizarre, whooping sounds in place of certain words.

Wondering if there is a SAFE way to use the Adaptive Noise Reduction tool, adjusting until it cleans out just the bits I want out, and preserves the richness of the voice.

Wading through the user guide, and will share what I learn. Does anybody have any guidance on this?

Thanks

rob

ryclark · Accepted Answer

If you are running the latest CC 2019 v.12 of Audition the new DeNoise effect is actually much better than Adaptive NR, especially if used in small amounts.

SteveG_AudioMasters_ · Answer

unauthorizedrob wroteWondering if there is a SAFE way to use the Adaptive Noise Reduction tool, adjusting until it cleans out just the bits I want out, and preserves the richness of the voice.My personal view about this is gloriously simple...NO!Because it's adaptive, it's inevitably unpredictable. It's primary purpose is to make a basic attempt to clean up dialogue from situations where the background is constantly changing, and that absolutely shouldn't be the case with a reading in a controlled environment. If you really want to use NR, then use the 'process' system, and only reduce the amount in small steps (3-5dB), having set the FFT size as high as it will go before taking a noise sample. You almost certainly won't need a small FFT setting, because there shouldn't be much LF noise needing a larger window to analyse. And it's the lower settings that tend to lead to the processing noise being more audible. On top of that, you'll probably find that once you've sampled the background from one file, it will be sufficiently similar to all the others, so you can save it an use it again. With care, you could even use it as part of a batch process...

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