Buzz on dialogue lament

[Guest]

Hello All,

I apologise for asking a question that has already been asked thousands of times already over the internet but I am at a loss.

I have a long interview using radio mics and throughout the recording an awful intermittent buzz/frequency/hum can be heard over the voices. I have watched many tutorials about noise/buzz removal using Audition but every time I try to replicate the smooth removal of the problematic buzz, it does not go away at all from my recording. I have tried using noise reduction tools, using the noise print tool, removing certain frequencies from the waveform etc but it's like a wine stain that won't come out.

I really would like to know if anyone else could have a go at improving this clip so that I know if I'm either incompetent or alas the recording cannot be saved.

Here is a clip with two examples of buzzes over different voices:

Buzz over dialogue clip by Pippa Young | Free Listening on SoundCloud

I would greatly appreciate if any Audition wizards could help out a rookie to see how much this clip can be improved with the right techniques (shouting at my computer has not helped much).

Many thanks to you all for reading and have a wonderful day.

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

What I noticed about the buzz from listening to it was that its level altered significantly, and that always makes it harder to track. But having it on SoundCloud isn't really any use - if you want us to look at it, it needs to be an uncompressed wav file, posted somewhere like Dropbox, with a public link to it. Any form of file compression significantly alters the original, especially when it relates to almost continuous noise with a lot of harmonics, which is what you appear to have.

Mostly what you need to be concentrating on is not recording this buzz in the first place, and if you can tell us exactly what you're doing, we may be able to help with that, and it would be a much more effective solution!

[Guest]

Hello Steve

Many thanks for your reply.

Sorry for not providing the raw file, I am a rookie after all! Here is a Dropbox link to the audio with unchanged levels:

Dropbox - buzz over dialogue extract.wav

This extract is also longer so you can hear more of the clean dialogue.

As for preventing this kind of problem, I was not present for this shoot, am just working as editor- darn that "we'll fix it in post" attitude!

Would appreciate any advice to target this specific buzz if you have any ideas.

Thanks a million.

Pippa

[ryclark]

The Sound Removal tool seems to work quite well with a bit of tweeking. The hard part is finding sufficient of the buzz on it's own without underlying speech to save the Sound Model from.

Here's the result of a quick go at it.

Dropbox - buzz over dialogue extractDBuzz.wav

P.S. I notice there also one or two 'splats' from the wireless mics.

[Guest]

Hello ryclark,

Many thanks for having a go at that, I really appreciate your help.

Your attempt is far better than my own attempts, I will give the Sound Removal tool a go. I hope you don't mind me asking a couple of questions about your method. When creating a sound print to remove the buzz, which kind of frequency are you removing from to get rid of the worst of the buzz? Are you using the Marquee tool to remove an oblong section of the waveform?

Thanks so much!

Pippa

[SteveG_AudioMasters_ · Accepted solution]

ryclark  wrote

The Sound Removal tool seems to work quite well with a bit of tweeking. The hard part is finding sufficient of the buzz on it's own without underlying speech to save the Sound Model from.

Yeah, I did about that 'well' with it too, so I tried some selective NR, which was marginally (and I mean that most sincerely, folks) better. But yes, it's hard to find anywhere sensible, and even then you still have to deal with the fact that the level of it varies. Whoever recorded this clearly didn't use headphones to monitor what was going on...

Anyway, to give you a clue, you need the NR FFT set to its maximum, and you're looking for a sample something like this:

I've left all the clues you need in the screengrab. But you still have to experiment a bit with the NR controls, probably advancing them somewhat from their default positions.

The problem with this recording is that the digital hash is all over the audio, and modulated by it, which makes it pretty much impossible to shift by any means; it really is a mess. One of the things that it sounds a bit like is a faulty mic lead - dodgy screen connections can cause this sort of thing to happen. What actually causes it when it sounds like this is things like unscreened laptop power supplies, etc. In an electrically polluted environment, a lot more care is required...

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

Should add that the first thing I did was to boost the audio by +15 dB - made it a little easier to monitor on headphones, at least.

[ryclark]

Yes I noticed that the levels were a bit on the low side. I actually used the Lasso tool to draw around a section of the buzz missing out any of the dialogue to get a Sound Print for the Sound Removal tool. If you are lucky you may find a better place in your recording where more of the buzz is on it's own and not so mixed in with the speech.

[Guest]

SteveG and ryclark,

Many thanks for spending the time to work on this problem.

It's very useful to know that my failure to remove the buzz is not just my lack of ability. I will apply the techniques you suggested, a thousand thanks for your invaluable input.