Audio Postproduction for Digital Video

Chapter 16

Noise Reduction

Remember this:

•	You can often lower the level of perfectly steady, pitched noises (such as lamp dimmer buzz or camera whine) dramatically, and in some cases eliminate them entirely.
•	You usually can’t get rid of random or unpitched noises (such as traffic or preamp noise) without compromising dialog. The best you can do is make them less annoying.
•	Equalizers, expanders, and delays can also be effective noise reducers. Instructions and examples are in previous chapters.

It’s Not Really Noise Reduction

Today’s sophisticated software and expensive DSP-driven boxes do an amazing job of distinguishing random noise from speech and applying sneaky techniques to make the noise less objectionable.

But make no mistake; ...