so I've been "evaluating" the waves x-noise / restoration bundle and was pleasantly surprised with the results - and I'm curious as to what others are using to handle noise reduction and how the waves bundle compares to say the sony oxford restoration bundle or any others designed for mastering purposes.

also, automatic clip/click removal? I've tried a couple programs and they don't seem to do the trick on dense program material.

all the best,

ryland

1st a disclaimer: I'm PC based so the following comments are based around solutions for PC native and might not be available on Mac, and there are a number of solutions solely for Mac that I haven't tested.

Anyway -
I was pretty unimpressed with X-noise for broad band NR when I demoed it as it didn't perform any better than the Virtos Audio Noise Wizard DX suite for the tracks I was testing - yet X-noise is about 10 times the price of the Virtos stuff! - and also Virtos doesn't include any annoying copy protection schemes or questionable "update program" fees that Waves has.
http://www.virtos-audio.com

I'm still looking for a more useable solution for broadband NR than either Virtos or X-noise. I recently demoed out Diamond Cut's Live6/Forensics and was fairly impressed with a number of the filter options - but it being a standalone program with a fairly clumsy interface did turn me off from an immediate purchase. I also tried out Voxengo's Redunoise recently - but again the interface, although allowing for a number of user controllable parameters, was way too tweaky and hard to get good results with quickly, so again I passed on getting it.

Algorithmix DeNoiser, Waves Z-noise and of couse CEDAR's Cambridge NR4 all look like solutions I'd like to investigate - but all three of these of course come at a heftier price. Since an API5500 is en route to here now - my new toys budget is currently tapped out for the moment so these things will have to wait.

I do know that Sonoris is currently working coding a SAWStudio native spectral de-noiser that should be out by early next year, and based on how high quality the rest of his plugins are (i.e. his Linear Phase EQ's high shelf is one of the best I've heard from a digital eq, and his multiband comp definitely sounds better to my ear than Waves' offerings) - this is definitely something I want to try before purchasing anything else.

For click/crackle removal I've had excellent results with the DX declick plugin included in the Sony NR2.0 suite. I should note that I nearly always only process the small sections that needs declicking instead of just running it across the entire audio track.

Best regards,
Steve Berson

Yes, I am using OSX so most of those will probably not be options. I have been using ProTools as a source format so I've been fairly limited to RTAS plugins.

I am considering moving over to Sonic Studio Soundblade because it seems as though the restoration tools are included and the total price would be about the same as getting the Oxford or Waves restoration bundles. In the past I have hated all the Waves plugins I've used - so I guess my surprise with x-Noise was that it actually did it's job fairly well and when used minimally did not kill the program material.

If anyone has any experience with Soundblade I'd love to hear how it's working out for people..! Best,

Ryland

I thought X-Hum was freaking brilliant. The rest I didn't really care for.

I use Waves and Sony, but they both seem to remove too much signal below the threshold, and alot of ambience resides down there. I do mostly live acoustic recording of ensembles or even full orchestras, so unlike some multi-track projects, most every track of mine has some low level information, a decay with the hall in it, that needs to find its way into the master.

I've heard there are NR tools that remove complex but repeatable noise patterns from anywhere in a track. They apparently do some kind of seek and subtract on the noise pattern without touching low-level ambience that you don't consider "noise." Anyone know who makes these tools for either PC or Mac?

I have both the Waves & The Sony Oxford restoration suites (as well as a few others that I don't use as much). I prefer X-Noise for broadband noise reduction and Sony de-Click for clicks and to soften the transients of certain sounds.

Sound On Sound magazine did a comparitive test about 18 months ago between Sound Soap, X-Noise and the Sony plug-ins. They also included samples from each on an accompanying DVD. The Sony plug-ins seemed to work fractionally better than the Waves but I could do as well, or better than any of them with the tools in Adobe Audition.

One big tip with noise reduction - don't try to do it all at once. Two or more passes of light noise reduction, altering the parameters as you go, works better than one pass of drastic reduction.

Cheers

James.

My sentiments exactly.

What specific tools are you using in Adobe Audition. I use that program for this purpose from time to time as well and I'm curious which one's you find the most useful...

bcgood

I use the noise reduction tool and the click/pop eliminator mainly. The hiss reduction tool has never really worked for me so I'll always go for the full noise reduction if I have a noisy cassette to transfer. I keep finding new tricks - my latest is using the centre channel eliminator in reverse with worn mono vinyl records.

Cheers

James.

I mostly use the click pop eliminator tool selecting auto find all levels then ok. The noise reduction tool seems to negatively effect the signal too much for me. I use dolby b on my tape deck and some narrow band eq adjustments...

bcgood

Has anyone tried these yet?

http://www.cube-tec.com/protoolsvpi/index.html

Looks interesting Tom.

Hopefully better than the run of the mill restoration plug ins.

Some good user comments.

Hi Ryland,

I can't comment on all the tools, but I have been using Sonic Studio DDP with MDC (Manual DeClick), and really like it. I don't know how I managed without it before. Very transparent results, and very easy to use. There is a range of algorithms that you can choose to match the underlying audio to the problem you need to tackle. Type B works for most stuff I've tried it on, and E gets a fair bit of use too in my work.

I'm happy enough with the results thus far that I'd really like to check out the full suite. In comparison to what I've tried otherwise (Spark XL, Peak, Waves) it's much better. I haven't tried Cedar, although I hear people speak highly of it.

Cheers,
Thor

I use Sonic Studio HD for Manual Declick - still totally amazed with it. For broadband noise - Cedar DNS 1000 seems to be very very good (I know, I know, it IS expensive...). After it Waves does not look good at all.
As to apps for OS X, Algorithmix ReNOVAtor will be included in new SonicX, and if I remember correctly, you can buy it for SoundBlade and for PT. Cedar makes plugins for PT as well, I didn't have a chance to work with them.

Waves NS-1 is actually a beast. I've tried and still use all the other common ones, iZotope & Waves etc (haven't got Sonnox plugins), but thought it was worthing mentioning how good the NS-1 is.

ancient thread, but i did use Waves Noise reduction on a Steve Winwood (Blind Faith, Traffic, etc.) track about 15 years ago, to remove the noise from the right channel of a stereo mix, his iirc.

worked great!

shortly after that i switched to Sonic NoNoise which is totally amazing, augmented w Rx spectral editor...

Cheers, JT