Re: [linux-audio-user] Noise gate (or something else?)

On Sun, 2006-02-05 at 23:37 +0300, Mikhail Ramendik wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I desperately need a noise gate, or something else to remove breathing sounds.
> Could anyone help me find one?

There is a ladspa plugin called: "Gate" by Steve Harris. It's available
in the swh-plugins package. But ..

> I am recording using Audacity 1.2.3 from a rather simple microphone, and
> breathing sounds are clearly heard when the speaker inhales air; from the
> look of the graph, it seems that a simple noise gate would remove them. But I
> could not find a noise gate in Audacity 1.2.3...

.. setting up a gate in audacity is painstaking as you can't do it in
realtime. You need to try some parameters, listen to what happened, undo
and reiterate until you found the right parameters. I suggest using
Ardour for this task.

If you really want to use audacity, you can also do this with jack-rack
and a jackified wave editor like mhwaveedit or rezound. Also, some
versions of audacity are jack aware, but you still need to run the
effect outside of audacity because the lack of non-realtime effects.

> Is there any program, including a plugin for or later version of Audacity,
> taht would do noise gating?
>
> Or perhaps there is a better way to remove the sounds? (There is a Noise
> Removal plugin, but might it not affect the voice itself?)

Noise removal is a totally different beast. What you want is a gate.

When gating the signal though, i suggest that after finding the right
parameters for the gate to work correctly, try making the gate a "soft"
gate via the "Range" parameter. Breathing noise might be irritating at a
level, but vocals without breathing might sound unnatural.

-- 
Sampo Savolainen <v2@email-addr-hidden>