Finishing up a song this week, and I found noise on two of the drum tracks. The lead in on both is clean and quiet, but as soon as the drumming starts, there's a motorboat like sound, louder at the beginning of the tracks, fading towards the end. I had not heard it previously, but as I'm mastering and EQing the songs, it really stuck out to me. I'm told there are ways to eliminate, but I'm not sure how to go about it, or what plug in I might use. Anyone have any suggestions to try to eliminate the noise?

Isotopes denoise plugin is awesome. I've stopped using all others. https://www.izotope.com/e...t/rx-plug-in-pack.html

metz
Isotopes denoise plugin is awesome. I've stopped using all others. https://www.izotope.com/e...t/rx-plug-in-pack.html

+ 1,000

SonitusFX: Gate ;)

Are they MIDI or audio tracks?  I know you've been using AD lately, right?  Check your buffers and latency because you can turn them up while mixing or mastering.

Thanks for the reply metz. I have that package downloaded as a demo. I'll give it a try over the weekend and see how it works.

there are quite a few good noise reduction plugins, and unless your wallet will allow the entire CEDAR suite I think you are going to need a couple to cover all contingencies.
 
My tool chest has too many, the few I use include:
Izotope RX - probably the top of the heap today, and it is fairly intuitive, meaning you can get good results without a lot of artifacts without too much tweaking.
 
Accusonus ERA-D - this was distributed by Plugin Alliance, but is now available directly from the developer. It works really well on all sorts of noise, but it requires a bit of effort to get the best results. Other than ease of use I'd call it a tie with RX. The strange thing is one will work better on a track, and the next track the other will win. Very strange.

Sony/Sound Forge/Magix/whoever??? - There was a noise reduction plugin developed for Sound Forge, I'm pretty sure at some point they just bundled it with the editor, and I don't know if it can still be purchased separately. Which is too bad. Like Sound Forge it is FAST, and relatively easy to use, and for broadband noise, especially things like HVAC, I think it is probably still the best bet out there. In fairness, it was my only tool for a number of years (big number) so I pretty much know what settings to start from. If you are just getting started with noise reduction it might not be easy. I have no way to judge<G>!
 
I've used the demo versions of the Waves noise reduction plugins a couple times, always hoping that they'll knock it out of the park. Thus far I've been impressed with the results, but they offer me nothing new, no better noise reduction, no better workflow... might be a good starting point, but I've found no compelling reason to add them to the tools I already have.
 
Two things to keep in mind:
1) two or more passes with very gentle noise reduction will usually sound better than one pass with extreme settings. This applies to steady state and impulse noises.
2) it is all about the settings, and even almost 20 years later I have to listen carefully and make small adjustments to get rid of the noise without causing other problems. It is slow, tedious work.
 
Depending on the noise - and this does not apply to your case as described - my first pass is always to mute the noise at the heads and tails of the tracks, and sometimes even between phrases. Muting between notes can work, but often sounds unnatural.
 
For motorboating I would be inclined to start with a gate, a drum kit can cover a multitude of sins, unless of course it doesn't. In the bad old days I had a MIDI controlled gate from Drawmer that let me program in where the gate opened and closed... pretty remarkable at the time. I can now do the same thing more quickly, and more accurately with automated volume or mutes.

Good luck!

Thank You for the suggestions everyone. Cool and wst3, I'll try the gate suggestion and see how that works. Lynn, I've been playing around with AD, but this is a track that was laid down awhile ago and uses a real drummer. I'm not sure what induced the noise, as it's only on two of the drum tracks and only while the drums are playing, so it's not background noise. I had been looking at the Izotope Rx pack already, so I may need to add that to my permanent collection.
Thanks Everyone
Jackson

Speaking of gates.. Check out the demo of Expurgate. Exceptional gate!

Although the practical solution may well be noise reduction software, the odd motorboat sounding "noise" you describe raises the question of a cure (almost always more effective) rather than just a treatment. In most cases noise comes from either the environment (background noise) or electrical interference (grounding problems, radiating electromagnetic waves, loose connections etc.) or electronic instability (overamplification that raises the noise floor, poor design or defective analog equipment). None of these typically sounds like a motorboat. There are threads buried on this forum that went into some length about a "motorboating" problem in earlier versions of SONAR, which may be relevant. Another possibility is that you have set up a feedback loop somewhere, which would fit with the description of the sound only occurring when the signal strength (drums) increases. In any event, it would be useful to know exactly how you have recorded this noise, and worth some time and effort to figure out the source so that it does not reoccur.