How to remove continuous background noise from mp3 music file

[Sevenor]

How to remove continuous background noise from music file

Hi all,

I've converted a no. of live recordings from cassette tapes into mp3 files. However, while I can hear what the speakers were talking about, there is also this annoying and persistent/continuous background noise which I believe is caused by lousy recording. Therefore, I would like to filter out or at least suppress the noise as far as possible so that it's more bearable. Can someone pls give me some advice as to which software is good in doing this and how to go about it.

Thx a lot for helping.

 

[grego]

If I remember correctly, a free program called Audacity has the ability to remove noise from sound files. I think how it works is that you select a section of the file (shown to you in its wave form) that contains only the background noise and tell the software that this is what you want to get rid of. It then attempts to take out that noise from the whole file. It's really easy to use, though I don't recall how well it works. If you dl the software, look around in the top menu bar and there should be an option for it (in one of the drop down menus), its not hard to find.

 

[Sevenor]

If I remember correctly, a free program called Audacity has the ability to remove noise from sound files. I think how it works is that you select a section of the file (shown to you in its wave form) that contains only the background noise and tell the software that this is what you want to get rid of. It then attempts to take out that noise from the whole file. It's really easy to use, though I don't recall how well it works. If you dl the software, look around in the top menu bar and there should be an option for it (in one of the drop down menus), its not hard to find.

But the noise I was talking about is in the speech part of the recording as well, can they be separated then have the noise part filtered out still?
Thx!

 

[grego]

I think the way that it is supposed to work is that you sample a space that is only noise. The program analyzes this sound into some sort of wave pattern (or whatever it is that you would see on an oscilloscope, I'm not sure if it's still considered a type of sine wave if it is not a single frequency) and then tries to take that pattern out of the entire recording.

In other words, lets say you have a square divided into three sections. One section is blue(noise), one is yellow(speech), one is green(noise+speech). Let's say you only want the square to contain black (no color, silence) and yellow. Well, then you'd sample blue and remove it from the whole square. Removing the blue from the green, you'd be left with yellow. This is how the function in Audacity appears to work, but I haven't used it in so long, and I've never used it extensively, so I cannot say how well it would work.

Bottom line, its worth a shot.

 

[molsen]

yea thats a good program as well as other various audio "scrubbers".... if one doesn't work, download a different one. some work better for certains types of hiss and noise than others. one of them is bound to work!

 

[Sevenor]

I think the way that it is supposed to work is that you sample a space that is only noise. The program analyzes this sound into some sort of wave pattern (or whatever it is that you would see on an oscilloscope, I'm not sure if it's still considered a type of sine wave if it is not a single frequency) and then tries to take that pattern out of the entire recording.

In other words, lets say you have a square divided into three sections. One section is blue(noise), one is yellow(speech), one is green(noise+speech). Let's say you only want the square to contain black (no color, silence) and yellow. Well, then you'd sample blue and remove it from the whole square. Removing the blue from the green, you'd be left with yellow. This is how the function in Audacity appears to work, but I haven't used it in so long, and I've never used it extensively, so I cannot say how well it would work.

Bottom line, its worth a shot.

That sounds like what I need. Will give it a try.
Thanks a lot!