Noise Reduction Issues

[Lukessa]

Hi, so I am having issues using the noise reduction feature to get rid of some background noise in my recordings due to some planes that fly close enough for my microphone to pick up, and I was hoping I could get so advice on what to do. Here are the two recordings I am trying to fix at the moment: https://librivox.org/uploads/rapunzelina/lollywillowes_02_warner_128kb.mp3 and https://librivox.org/uploads/rapunzelina/lollywillowes_03_warner_128kbs.mp3

You can hear the issue at around 20:10 and 21:45 in the first recording. These ones really aren't that bad but I'd like to fix them completely if I can.

And you can here the same issue at 7:07; 15:59; 18:31; 19:36; and 25:05 with the last one being the most egregious.

I created a noise reduction profile like you are meant to do using the spaces where only ambient noise is heard but no matter how many times I applied it the noise wouldn't completely go away. I also tried getting different noise reduction profiles within the time frame that the issue was present but even trying these did not help get rid of all the noise completely.

I am still really new to recording and editing so I don't know a whole lot other than the basics so I am hoping someone has suggestions for what else I could try because I don't want to give up yet.

Thanks in advance,
Sandy

[Peter Why]

How does this sound? It's only about 15 seconds long. https://librivox.org/uploads/tests/lollywillowes_NR_py.mp3

This is your 02 recording with noise around 20min 10secs. As you were trying to remove a particular sound, instead of sampling the room silence from the end of your recording, I sampled the aircraft noise from the gap around 20.08, then selected from 19.59 to 20.14 and carried out 5db of noise reduction. Resampling that section each time, I repeated for another 5db, then a final 3db.

I used the logarithmic display in Audacity to check the effectiveness of the NR (right click in the -1 to +1 strip at the left of the sonogram and choose logarithmic).It displays low volume sound preferentially over high-volume.

[Penumbra]

I have a couple of suggestions for future recordings. First, noise reduction works best when it has a longish noise profile (upwards of 10 seconds is good) so if you are recording and hear a plane going over, stop talking but continue to record the airplane. Then you will have a nice long sample to work with.

Second, if you notice a plane going over, stop recording until it has passed, then resume at the beginning of the sentence that has the airplane noise in it. During editing you can then just cut out the noisy sentence and the airplane, no noise reduction needed. (I think you can also do this with punch and roll to eliminate the post recording editing step.)

[Peter Why]

I agree; that's the ideal. I have lots of unedited recordings with "Blast, more traffic!" and re-recorded phrases in them. But I think the OP can recover reasonable sounding recordings from those two files by cleaning just the affected areas.

Peter