Sound Soap 2 of other?

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USLatin

Panamaniac
I have some seriously low level takes that I would love to be able to use, but the floor noise is just so prominent that EQ'ing them won't do, at all.

So I am trying to figure out if Sound Soap 2 is the best thing out there.

Also, how does it work? I am guessing that it can figure out what's the sound and discern it from the hiss. Then I guess it might have a fancy way to figuring out where the wave would have been from the sound samples closest to it... well I am guessing that's how it works... something like that anyway?
 
I haven't personally used Sound Soap, but I've heard that it is not that good. A relatively new tool is Izotope RX, which can do a fairly good job at noise reduction.

Pretty much all noise reduction tools work by first capturing a section that is pure noise with no program material. You then apply it to the whole audio file and reduce according to what sounds best.
 
I have SoundSoap 2 here. Brad is correct in that it is not great, but it is not bad either. Just don't expect too much of it.

On the minor stuff is does decently, but if you have an overload, SS doesn't handle it well.
 
First you should understand that noise reduction is a subtractive process. If you have a good signal and some noise NR can do a pretty good job of removing the noise and leaving your good signal. If your signal is crap then removing the noise leaves you with...

That said SS2 is OK. It works pretty well on low level noise and is pretty quick. If your editing in FCP (I'm assuming from the question that your a picture editor working on your sound) then Apple has a noise reduction filter (you may have to do a send to STP) that is at least as god as SS2. SS2 is around $80, RX is quite a bit more $ but is a much better tool. For hiss removal probably both will work close to the same but RX has a bunch of modules that can do a lot of things SS2 can't touch. If it's pure tape hiss you could also look into the Behringer Noise reducing boxes. They work great for things like tape hiss and are probably cheaper than SS2.
 
I am doing both the video and sound for my projects, and I am using Vegas which is just great for audio. I never heard of Izotope RX which is either about $350 or $1200 for the full version. I'll take a look at that one too. However I think the full version of "Sound Soap 2" is like $500 and like Noiz2 said only like $100 for the smaller version... I won't be getting the RX advanced version, that's for sure... so should I go with the full SS2 or the basic RX?

As to my noisy clips: Some isn't too bad, some people would actually just use it, but those people are the ones that make us go :shocked: with disgust at their mediocre audio aspirations. Quite a bit of it is just crap, and like Noiz2 said it will almost certainly be crap on the way out... completely hopeless shizzle. I wasn't expecting the holy grail, but I am hoping to be surprised... will I? How do they do compare to just EQ'ing the noise out? Are they truly "smart"?
I am only hoping for the stuff that isn't horrible to be made decent by my standards... then I'll add some sound design to hide it to the best of my ability.
 
Don't know vegas, I'm on a Mac and ProTools. I would not get the pricey version of RX. I looked at both and didn't really see where I would use or need the extra features. So the "cheap" version of RX is way beyond the "pricey" version of SS. I would check to see if RX has plugins that will work with Vegas. You get the stand alone and the plugins but it's a lot easier to use the plugins than sending audio to the stand alone and bringing them back in. They both are far more useful at removing most noise than EQ. For one thing they are dynamic, so when your sound is loud they don't affect it (it's drowning out any audible noise) and when things get soft they have more of an effect. EQ will pull out feq everywhere.
It's hard to tell if you will be "surprised" but if your sounds can be cleaned up you might be very surprised.
 
Hey Noiz2, I just looked around in Sound Forge 8.0 which I have and HOLY MOLY!!! There is no question about the fact that I would have been surprised Noiz! I was preparing for the worse I guess cause I certainly didn't think anything like this was going to happen even with the best of the best!
It has something like this stuff we are talking about called "Sound Restoration" and if RX or SS get any better than this I am golden! I can manage since I am also editing so I can figure ways to cut it avoiding the worst stuff and I had surrendered to the idea that I was going to have to do some ADR anyway.

Here is a Before and After of one of the clips I thought were TOAST... keep in mind I just played with the settings once, haven't gotten to mess with them practically at all, and I am sure I can dial it in better and I might get a touch better samples (click on the pictures if you want to hear the WMAs):






I hope it works for the download. So obvious question, should I buy anything else or does it seem that the all mighty Sony Vegas + Sound Forge is as all mighty as I need it to be for this particular project where I will need quite a bit of noise removal?
 
Oh! And sure enough, there it is, right inside of Vegas! This is going to be so much fun now!!!
I can feel my suicidal tendencies melting away... :love4:


BTW, for those curious I had to raise the volume of that example I posted almost up to 800%... I think it was like 789% or something sick like that.
 
USLatin said:
Oh! And sure enough, there it is, right inside of Vegas! This is going to be so much fun now!!!
I can feel my suicidal tendencies melting away... :love4:


BTW, for those curious I had to raise the volume of that example I posted almost up to 800%... I think it was like 789% or something sick like that.
Click to expand...

Also look around in your plugins for Sony Noise Reduction. Bundled with both Vegas Pro and SoundForge and even more powerful.
 
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