Tutorial: How to clean up a buzz within a sound track.

red_ice

A friend of mine showed me a little trick using Cool Edit Pro (2.1) to clean up a track. I have big problems getting nice quality into my tracks especially because i dont record with a preamp, or have access to any proper recording fascilities.

My setup consists of a very crap PC mic 6 inches infront of my guitar amp (fender champion 110). There is a constant buzz on my amp, and on my bass guitar (which also has a terrible buzz on it) the sound is just terrible when i play anything through it. Using this technique of cleaning up a track i've managed to get a somewhat reasonable sound quality within my recordings, and a very clean sound (considering what you Actually hear on the real recording).

Im writing my first ever tutorial on this little trick, because it simply made recording sound so much better for me, and i can see this coming in VERY handy for other people who, like me, want to record music, but dont have the cash to spend on proper equipment.

First off, get yourself a copy of Cool Edit Pro (i use 2.1), or Adobe audition. For this tutorial i will be using CEP. The way this works is like doing maths... If you add 2 and -2 together you get 0. We take the noise that we dont want to hear, sample it, reverse its sound waves, play them together and it gets canceled out - sounds odd, but it works... cool huh?

First off arm a layer and record your track. For an extreme example, i will put the bass tone to the bit that makes the fuzz, then add my amps distortion (not to much), so you can see what we are working with. I think ill take this opportunity to pimp one of my bands riffs Now, if you actually try to record a real track with the ammount of crap i have on this track, you need your head checked. This trick will clean up tracks very well, but you cant seriously expect it to work wonders with a rig like mine!

Make sure you take 10 seconds before or after your track to record the sound of nothing, this is what we are going to sample with. What ever white noise it is you are looking to get rid of, you need to record it on the track, or on another track, but make sure you have the same levels for each recording you want to use this effect with. The noise i want to get rid of is the buzz that my crappy bass and amp produce, but you can get rid of any consistant white noise with this trick.

record your track and select your area of noise that you want to delete(heres mine, so you can see what im working with)

Go to:
effects -> noise reduction -> noise reduction -> Click "Get profile from selection" -> Click "Save Profile" -> save as some random/relivant name

Deselect the area you highlighted before (the bit you highlighted to sample the white noise) and go

effects -> noise reduction -> noise reduction -> Click "Load Profile" -> load random/relivant name.

Play back your track, and enjoy.

heres my

before : http://www.filefactory.com/file/674ef6/
after : http://www.filefactory.com/file/da783d/

Disclamer : The tones used for those recordings are for educational purposes only, no music was ruined in the making of this tutorial

zero19

Ah noisegates are fun what with all that ducking stuff hehe