Sound editing software

Anyone know of a quality sound editing software program?

I recorded a few lectures at college, but it has some background noise, static etc. I was wondering if anyone knew of any programs that could split the different sounds or remove these things so I could change the quality of my recordings - thanks.

 

replying to myself with a thread in case anyone else had the same problem: (I havent checked the software out that was listed, but I could use some replies if there are any updated programs that are better than those listed in the other thread, thanks)

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=111233&highlight=Sound

Still trying to learn how to use it to improve the quality of my lecture... might try some other software if anyone recommends anything else besides audacity.

(Does anyone know what removing these extra effects is called anyhow?)

Thank you in advance.

 

Ok, this is a sample of my audio lecture. I dont know anything about the wavelengths / or anything about sound / music.

I just know when those peaks are at the highest, they correspond to my bumping my desk or sliding my recorder around, thus making a huge static sound that rapes my ears if i am wearing headphones.

Is there a way to crop those high peaks whenever they occur with soundforge (8.0) or audacity?

I dont know what the option is called, and I've looked through the manual (It is very difficult to find what I am looking for because I dont know any of the sound-terminology, and playing around with it, I've found nothing so far). I dont even know what it means when the sound is very loud, or the terminology for sound etc. If someone could point me to a website with the basics to crop this, it would be appreciated, I just really want to listen to simple audio lectures without my ears exploding from my loud sounds.

Thanks for any help.

 

I don't know much about Soundforge or Audacity (I've done my sound recording work in ProTools), but there are a couple of options you have that you might see if your programs support. First, compression can help kill the peaks. If your program has a compressor (which I believe Audacity does), fiddle with that. If you have a compressor and can show me a screen shot of it, I can offer you some suggestions for what settings to use (although fiddling around with it is also a great way to learn how it works). Also, you can use EQ to greatly reduce sound frequencies in the 100 - 300 Hz level as that is the range that is most likely being given off by those bumps. Try reducing around 300 Hz by 8 or 9 dB and see if it helps (again, if your programs have built in EQ, show me a screen shot and I can suggest some settings).

Background noise and static are a little more difficult to cut out. You can use an audio expander or a noise gate to cut out noise below a certain threshold, but that only really works well when nothing is going on in the recording (for example, think if someone was beating a snare drum every 2 seconds - the noise gate might cut out all background sound between each beat of the snare drum, but the background sound would still be present during the actual snare hit - it is louder so it doesn't trigger the threshold to drop the sound out).

Let me know if you have any other questions or if I can clarify something!

 

Alright, I downloaded Audacity and took a look. Compression and EQ is fairly simple (although I am not too fond of their EQ plug-in - it is cumbersome: you change the line by clicking on the areas and that raising and lowering it). I've attached some screen shots of settings you might try in each to help reduce the boom and the loudness. In the compression, raise or lower the threshold depending: if it cutting too much sound out, raise the threshold; if it is not enough, lower it. Also, for the EQ, if it is too tinny, don't lower the frequency range as much.

 

Ok, thanks much for the help, I'm going to try it sometime in the next few days when I finally get some free time from classes.



I also saw the Equalizer tool, and I'll try to play around with it too, basically its about the same as your Screen shot too, not much time atm, but thanks again for the help.

 

Alright, this compressor has a little more functionality than the one I looked at in the basic download of Audacity. I would advise trying the following first and then making adjustments to see if it helps. First, set "Scan mode:" to "Peak" (this will be looking for peaks in the audio, which seems to be your big problem with the above wave - versus RMS, which means root-mean-square which works more on average levels... ok, well not quite - that is overly-simplified, but that should be good enough for now ) Then, I would try setting the "Threshold" to around -6.0 dB (you may have to lower it further - if it doesn't knock down those obnoxious peaks, trying decreasing it to -12.0 dB). Then, I would start with a "Ratio" of around 10:1 - the higher your ratio (10:1, 20:1, etc.), the harder it will bring down those peaks. I would keep the "Attack time" setting fairly low - try around 20 ms or so (the lower the attack time, the quicker the compressor will bring down those peaks once they start; however, really fast attack times might will provide for less smoothness in sound). I would then set the "Release time" to around 300 or 400 ms (the longer the release time, the longer it takes to return to normal; a short release time can again make things sound bumpy). That is what I would try at first - see how it works and adjust accordingly. The bar on the far right (the one with 0.0 at the top and 21 at the bottom) will give you a graphic of just how much the compressor is knocking off.

I should note, my little side explanations (such as smooth and bumpy) aren't quite "normal" sound engineering terms (i.e., if you mention them to a sound engineer, they will probably look at you funnily), but I am hoping they will work as a description in place of a longer and probably fairly dull explanation.

 

I tried FlexiMusic Wave Editor for removing the static noise, output is better. seems like the best tool for the job.

 

Audacity, imo.
I use it to make ringtones.

 

http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/

50 minutes left

 

never heard of that site
giveawayoftheday...lol
is that site legit, they dont pack it with viruses or anything. ;x

 

+1 for audacity

 

You want to use a normalize function to kill those peaks. Its going to crush your audio, but wouldn't affect the spoken parts much. Set it to -.1 or something.

 

I use Audacity here, but I also have SoundBooth.

Audacity works better for me though, just because I haven't messed around with SoundBooth too much.

 

Guys,

Do not bring back old threads...Thread closed.

-Kdawgca
NBR Mod