Noise Reduction

izotope RX3 ist the very best.
Also ZNoise from waves.
But they are very expensive.
You have to mark a small region of the noise in the track (without guitar), then the plugins "learns" the noise.
Then apply the effect to the whole clip.
All other plugins do not really make the job.
I don't think that Cakewalk can give us so expensive tools (ZNoise 500$ to RX3 999$)

Has anyone tried this?
 
1. Copy the track with the noise.
2. Isolate the noise on the copied track, as you would with Sound Forge etc., and delete the rest.
3. Copy and paste the isolated noise repeatedly.
4. Flip the phase on the isolated noise track.
5. Bounce the original track and the copy with the isolated noise track together.
 
If no one has tried this, I'll give it a shot next time I record something with hiss or whatever.
 

Jeff Evans
Craig this does not work. In fact you will end up with twice as much noise! Reason this only works if the noise waveform is an exact inverted version of the original waveform which it will never be due to the random nature of noise itself.

True. For this type of procedure you need noise reduction software that allows you to take a noise print. iZotope RX, Sony Noise Reduction, and Acon Digital Restoration Suite have this capability. I'm sure there are other products as well.

Scott

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A simple free alternative is to track down a free copy of Cool Edit Pro 2.1. (It may only be 32 bit though which I suspect) Which you will find if you look. Use the noise reduction effect which is based on what Scott says. Sample the noise on its own and selectively remove it. And you may have to do it over several passes too, dont try to do a lot of noise reduction in one hit. Sometimes you will get some weird artifcats when you do this. Several very light passes sometimes works much better.
 
One trick I have found is you don't have to apply it to the whole track either. Only in the sections that are either not playing at all or just the quiet sections. Also up to where the guitar parts kicks in or gets loud. Once the guitar is loud it will often mask the noise. The noise is usually only noticeable when the guitar is either not playing or quiet.
 
Cool Edit is also a fantastic editor as well. It is a good idea to open up individual tracks in an editing program and do some mix prep before a mix. It will often save a lot of time later.
 
 

When necessary, I use Adobe Audition for noise reduction. I read somewhere a while back that it incorporates or is the successor to Cool Edit Pro. Definitely not free, but it does a great job of creating a noise print and filtering the noise out. I use to videotape live events, and would always try to get a few seconds of background noise (for example, air handler noise) so I could filter it out from the entire video later. I remember I thought that was just the coolest thing the first time I tried it.

I am not even sure it would work with hum either. What makes you think the hum in a track and the inverted hum that you create are going to remain in phase over the whole course of a track. At some point they may drift timing wise and then you will no longer get full cancellation.
 
A better way to go would be copy the track to a lower track and then filter very steeply everything below and above the hum so all that is left is just the hum. Then invert that and add it to the track with the guitar and hum and as they are in phase it would more than likely work better.
 
Hum can also be treated perhaps with a very steep notch filter. It is not going to effect the guitar sound much but will rid the track of hum. The good thing about hum is it is only one frequency (perhaps two, sometimes you get 60Hz and 120 Hz components in hum (or 50 and 100 Hz in our case, better BTW) and very constant.