Difference between Noise Removal effects/processes and when to use which.

[phxphy]

I've been searching and haven't found a explanation to this. I sort of get the general gist of it, but I'd like to get a clearer understanding.

Noise Reduction (process), Sound Removal (process), Adaptive Noise Reduction, and DeNoise. What is the difference between them, and what scenarios call for each of them?

Thank you!

[SteveG_AudioMasters_ · Accepted solution]

Sound removal isn't really a noise reduction process at all - it can sometimes (if you are lucky...) be trained to recognise a specific sound and identify it whenever it occurs in a file. Often results with this are pretty mixed; clear removal is quite rare. Also it takes quite a bit of setting up, even to get moderate results with it.

As for the rest - Noise Reduction (process) is the ideal one to use, if you set it up carefully. It tends to work best with several passes at different FFT settings, and not taking too much off at each pass. It also works best with a clear profile, but will only take out continuous noise. It's very easy to overdo this one, and end up with strange watery sounds in the results. And it only works in Waveform view, which is what the 'process' bit is a reference to.

Adaptive NR is something that's pretty cheap and cheerful, and is often used to get dialog recorded on set a bit cleaner. Being adaptive though, it kicks in gradually and the effects of it are likely to vary across your track. The primary idea is that it is supposed to be better when you have widely varying noise levels. Basically it's nowhere near as clean as the process NR, but can be useful in the situations it was designed to deal with - primarily dialog.

DeNoise is the most recent addition, and is closely related to the DeReverb effect. It uses a much more recent algorithm and can sometimes be effective - but you have to preview it carefully first. to make sure it's doing what you want. You can save your own presets in it, but the only NR that will let you save actual noise samples is the process NR, which only works in Waveform view. All of the other NR tools are basically adaptive - so there's no ability to save profiles at all.

[phxphy]

Thank you so much! I really appreciate your time and response. I hadn't thought of doing multiple passes with NR (process), so I'll definitely give that a try!