need help from the Audiophiles!

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There is this sound on hundreds of Alan Watt's audio recordings that drives me insane!! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !
I enjoy his teaching but I just can't stand these sounds.
Please can someone tell me what these sounds are.
I don't want guesses because any idiot like me can guess.
I want a knowledgeable answer.
Thanks.

this video exemplifies what I mean

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQRIIeM ... 87D921CE94

I'm no expert but it sounds like he's moving or rustling something in front of his mike.
Maybe an expert has a better answer though.

unfortunately he seems to have recorded his speeches "live" as it were, and not in a sterile announcer's booth or studio, so there are lots of ambient noises therein, most of which could be gotten rid of if one gets themselves some kind of noise gate.

That noise could be most anything. It is too hard to tell after the fact. But I admit it is very distracting and highly annoying. If it were me, I'd copy this locally to your computer and run it thru this program. You will have to play with it a bit to acheive the desired filtration. I would try tonight but have horrible migraine. I could only listen to a minute of that clip and I was about ready to smash my computer....

Audacity

slave, use the noise gate feature on audacity to gate out the noise.

I had to convert it to an MP3 from an FLV first. I ran the noise gate on it, third try not to bad. If you want I can email the resultant MP3 to you Slave. It is just a tad over 2meg. Just shoot me your email via pm. Both of these tools audacity and the flv converter are free....

Noise gates can work to reduce the ambient BG sounds, but the sound of the Noisegate opening and closing is also annoying in it's own right.

then that is where signature-based noise reduction comes in, you take a sample of the noise then the algorithm "listens" to that and as best it can removes all instances of similar noise, it requires some fiddling to get just right but the results can be astounding.

Exactly! It came out quite well IMHO. Not perfect but very listenable now. Before the noise was bad enough after less then a minute I stopped it. Audacity is a very good software program and I use it often!

the algorithm has an easier time if you bandwidth-limit the material before hand, IOW you get fewer twittering aliasing artifacts that way.

Thanks for your counsel.

^^^
prego

Thanks for your generosity of spirit and your expertise.

You are most welcome however expertise? Not really, just necessity actually from years of converting analogue music sources to digital. Trial and error but I will admit to doing a bit of DSP programming when they first came out eons ago (for ham radio). Helps me make semi-decent guesses. LOL

I have the settings saved from how I did the sample noise gate that AuntBlabby spoke of. You just need to sample a short quiet phase (this gentleman in the video NOT talking with the noise present. The settings I came up with will do the rest.

Last edited by KB8CWB on 27 May 2014, 10:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.

molte grazie!!