Hi all,
I’m getting into some recording lately to share some information I’ve learned over the years and one issue I’m currently facing is that it’s very hot where I am in this summer season and I have an older house without central AC, so I have to rely on fans and a window AC unit to keep cool.
Problem with that is that I now have fan noise in the background when trying to record. I don’t yet have a good place where I can reliably record without these noises but hoping I can in the future.
In the meantime, I was wondering if anyone knew of any program that might help me out here. Since this is a constant sound that doesn’t change much, I wondered if there might be some type of “AI” app that could check for sounds like this that are constant and remove those sounds so I can have a cleaner track to work with? Does such a thing exist?
I have access to Windows 11 and Linux (Pop! OS) computers as well as an iPad, iPhone, and Android tablet, so anything that is available for any of these is good for me. Just want something quick and easy so I can have something cleaner to work with in post processing.
Thank you!
Edit: thanks for the answers, everyone! This has been really helpful and I’ll be checking into all of these suggestions.
Sorry about my poor wording that made it sound like I may have been seemingly only interested in something “AI” related. That wasn’t my intention, just one possible avenue I considered but I am also interested in other possibilities too that have been provided here and I will be checking out all of these!
You don’t need “AI” for this. Here’s an article with several suggestions for free- and open source solutions:
https://arcinarci.net/open-source-noise-cancellation-software/
If the software you use for recording has any support for audio plugins, that’s probably the easiest solution.
I agree with the other answer that a noise removal VST (or similar) is probably the most efficient option.
If you want to try something “AI” based anyways, I would suggest demucs, which was originally made to separate music into voice, instruments, …
I use easyeffects for noise cancelling on my mic, and then use what comes out of easyeffects in any other program.
DeepFilterNet is fairly effective. Not quite as good as RTX Voice I would imagine, but it does wonders for my meetings with the duct right behind the webcam and the furnace right behind that wall.
EasyEffects supports it out of the box as long as the plugin is installed, and the Flatpak also comes with it bundled I believe.
That said, for recording, I would recommend applying the filter in post so you have the original to try different settings and get the best quality.
In addition to software solutions, how’s your hardware setup?
- How far are you from your mic? And where is your fan located relative to you and your mic?
- Do you have a dynamic mic or condenser mic? I’m not an expert, but I believe condenser mics tend to pick up more ambient noise from anywhere in the room compared to dynamic mics, which tend to more directional in nature.
My current hardware setup isn’t great which is another thing I’ll need to improve upon as time goes on.
But thank you for the information about condenser versus dynamic microphones, I’ll have to check that out.
You should also look into the polar pattern of the mic you’re getting.
You’ll probably want a dynamic mic with a cardioid, hypercardioid, supercardioid or subcardioid pattern.
Though it isn’t open source, I want to mention that iZotope RX is the industry standard for audio cleanup in post. Maybe by knowing its name and reading about its features, you’ll be able to write more specific search prompts to find the best (F)(L)OSS alternatives for your situation.
If you’re not yet using reaper I highly advise you to try it out. I run it on debian and it works extremely well. For noise reduction you can use reafir which is one of the built in plugins of reaper. Here is a link with basic tutorial on how to do noise reduction with it.
https://www.homebrewaudio.com/9603/reafir-madness-hidden-noise-reduction-tool-in-reaper/
Seconding reafir, or really any audio silencing plugin.
Record silence for 5 - 8 seconds, turn on FX, set to subtract and then playback the silence with the checkbox.
You’ll see the frequency range it takes up. In some cases this can affect your source audio, for example if the clicking sound is in the same range as a higher pitched humans voice, they may become warbled or inaudible.
This can be done to take out car whooshing/air to some extent, and general background hums from line input or gain noise or fans.
