Removing hiss?

Maybe R-Mix and clip gain automation might help, other free solutions: ReaFIR http://www.reaper.fm/reaplugs/ and Audacity claims to provide a noise reduction solution. After that it gets a little pricey, iZotope RX2 or noise reduction tools in commercial audio editors.

+1 for Rmix

I think the inversion technique idea comes from a technique some folks use to clean up guitar leads on tracks.

A lot of guitar lead tones have a BUNCH of noise, and one theoretical way to get rid of that is to record a track of nothing but the noise, and then invert the signal, and it will cancel out the noise frequencies (many of them anyways) from the actual guitar track with the noisy lead tone on it.

Bob Bone

Surgical envelopes would work assuming there is no other material in the track at that point.  For example the very short spaces in a vocal track could easily be cleaned up in this manner..... however a track with hiss and an acoustic guitar playing softly would not be easy to clean up with this method. 


You can zoom and place the nodes a milli-second before and after the material and achieve the silence you seek. But the soft notes where you can hear the hiss through the note ..... yeah, that's not going to work. 

I think I saw a hiss remover in cakewalk.... although I have never used it. The best option is to not record hiss to start with , but I know that is not always possible, especially if someone else recorded the tracks. 

There are noise removal tools - Sony's is pretty good.  It does the sampling/removal thing - along w/ control of the amount of removal.  Works pretty good.  I've been using a little stereo recorder on some piano/singer gigs in a church - classical and pop from the 30s.  The church has ac and the unit itself is a bit noisy.  The noise removal makes it acceptable and if you are careful you don't really lose anything.

@

I recorded an acoustic/vocal track in a room that had background noise due to a fan. R-Mix removed ALL of it. Seriously try that out. It works amazingly well for a freebie... oh wait. You're still on X1? hmm... Not sure how crippled the demo version is but it would seriously be worth trying. Also some kind folks recommended Izotope RX2 for heavy duty audio restoration and it looks awesome. Supposedly the demo is fully functioning so might be worth a look as well... http://www.izotope.com/products/audio/rx/

Yup. The light version anyway but it's still quite handy and powerful. Not quite sure what extra features come with the full version.

I just checked,  Its the Sonitusfx Gate Im thinking of.

Missed the X1 in the sig. Forget R-Mix. With X1 you are down to the expander/gate, EQ, envelopes and maybe ReaFIR. As far as editors go, I would not spend money on one unless it had a decent set of tools (which runs into money) There are a few good free ones, such as Wavosaur http://www.wavosaur.com/ or WaveShop http://waveshop.sourceforge.net/ Wavosaur has the advantage of using VST plug-ins.

Glenn: I am no sound engineer, but I have some friends that are pro at scrubbing. I really can't tell you the secretes of how they do it, as many of then will not tell me all the details. I am sure the suggestions might help but let me put in my 2 cents.
 
The best way to get rid of noise on a track, is not have it there in the first place!
 
First you say it is an acoustic guitar. But, how are you recording it? Last night I listened to Grand Funk doing "Don't Look Back" on an acoustic, recorded 40 years ago, in 1973. One of the best sounding acoustic guitars I have ever heard on a recording. No computers back then, and no noise in his track.
 
If you are recording the acoustic with mics, be sure to use mic pre-amps. The better the pre-amp the less noise in the mic signal, and they get very expensive. You want dead silence in the mics when there is "NO" sound, before you record. For instance spend time adjustng the pre-amp properly for the sound you desire. You can place a mic in font of a stereo speaker and let a CD play as you adjust it for EQ, Threshold, input and output signal. pre, low cut, etc. It will help, to bring up the Hi-Mid on the pre-amp. The hiss is usually having too hot a mic. Point one mic at about fret 10, and the other near the bridge base of the guitar, none at the hole of the guitar. Make sure the meters at the armed track are not floating up the scales with dead silence, this is a sign they are too hot. Get the gain right on the mics, and then carefully lower the output signal compared to the in gain at the pre and mic, to achieve a recording signal from about -6 to -15 dbs when struming the guitar. By reducing the output signal along with the gain signal achieve total dead silence in the signal when you are totally quiet. One will outweigh the others ability to do this.
 
So now that you have that adjusted, you should see a -6 to -15 db at the armed track as you strum the guitar, and totally nothing on the meter when your are silent. Place the mics in position to how close they are to the guitar for tweaking this signal according to what you are playing. Of course noise at places in the track where you meant to be silent like tapping your foot etc...can be spliced out of the track, in clip automation or other ways. Do that last as the volume automation will prevent you from doing the mix, or you can do this and then bounce it to a new track, and remove the envelope at that point. The total dead silence factor on a mic signal beats trying to remove noise from a already recorded track. the better the original track was recorded the better the end product. You probably need to be a sound engineer to actually know all the pros amd cons of master scrubbing. Ambient sounds is another story. I assume they do both in line and mic recording and then have an engineer scrub it properly. Some of this gear gets way into the bucks.
 
If you are recording "line in", get a Boss noise reduction for the guitar feed, and run the out, assuming it is XLR through the pre-amp and do the same process. Also, use a Baggs or Zoom or some processor to reduce noise reduction, Fishman acoustic amps have a Anti Feedback built in that also helps. You should hear absoultly nothing in a signal when it is dead silent. Live recordings another story. Heavy Metal again, another story.
So go listen to the signal at dead silence and hear if you are achieving that to start with! Then take the above advise and you are starting to get a professional scrubbed track.
 
Best of luck! Free
 
PS: Go ahead and plop another 2 gigs of ram into that pc.
  
 

On mono tracks, where you're wanting compression, consider multiband compression (compress the noisy frequencies less or not at all). Also consider lowering gain on noisy frequencies.

What about plain old EQ. You can automate some of the EQs. I think the Pro Channel EQ Automation is a little goofy or slow or something. Sometimes the automation works and sometimes it's slow. Like a tight millisecond notch may or may not work on bouncing in my experience. You might consider adding another EQ for automation. I've noticed some threads on PC EQ automation as well. Not sure what the truth is.

But certainly you can automate the other EQs you can add to the project. That way, you can duck the noise when you boost the quiet parts and relax the EQ when you have more signal.

ive found the best restoration/remove hiss, hum, exc is izotope RX 2.
there may be a 30 day trial im not sure but if you happen to get your hands on this tool it is amazing.
ive taken distorted crummy 25 year old reel / 4 track vocal tracks and cleared them right up.

good luck buddy.

Steve- Wave Lab7 Elements is only $90. It comes with everything you need for home studio and semi pro work. Your Sonar plug ins will also be available. The full blown version would be nice but is $$$. Once you've used it, you will find using Sonar to edit a wave file or mastering pre historic. It's the same with Melodyne for pitch correction, simply better for the job.