FinnDave Posted July 4, 2015 Share Posted July 4, 2015 I wonder if anyone can offer a few words of advice on this. Last weekend we played at a biker rally and recorded the second set (because I forgot to set up the recorder for the first!). Because there was nowhere to leave the recorder (Yamaha pocket track) I place in Ms. Haan's assistant's hand bag (with her assistance, of course) with just the mics, covered by the pop shield, sticking out. We played a pretty good set, and the sound recorded pretty well for such an ad hoc arrangement, and is a useful record of how we sound in full flow, much more 'us' than any studio recordings we have made. The problem is that I forgot to ask Eve (assistant) whether she had a mobile phone switched on. I only released my mistake when I played the recording back the following day. In fact, she had [i]three[/i] mobiles in there, all switched on. The signal breakthough is intermittent, and not overwhelming, but it definitely spoils the recording. Is there any way of filtering this out without ruining the music? We will be recording tonight's gig, this time without mobiles anywhere near, but last week's was a good high energy performance and the basic sound recorded well on most tracks and we would like to use a few on our facebook page to help publicise the band. All advice gratefully received. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Skol303 Posted July 6, 2015 Share Posted July 6, 2015 Hmmm... tricky! In short: you're not going to be able to filter out mobile phone interference from your recordings in a truly satisfying/convincing way. The problem being that the frequencies occupied by the interference will also be occupied by parts of the music - so if you trying EQ'ing (or filtering out) the interference, you'll also be removing chunks of the music that you'd rather keep. The only things I can suggest are: [list] [*]Try to work out what frequencies the unwanted noise occupies - eg. look at the waveform of the recordings whilst its playing, using a spectrum analyser plug-in, keeping an eye out for any nasty peaks in the signal. Use a narrow parabolic EQ to cut away (or dampen) those frequencies - ideally automate the EQ so that it only affects the sound when the interference is happening. [*]Or... try automatically removing the noise of the interference - eg. using the Noise Removal tool in Audacity (http://audacityteam.org). Do this by: 1) Selecting a small section of the unwanted noise; 2) Opening the Noise Removal tool and choose 'Select Noise Profile'; 3) Select all of the track; 4) Open up the Noise Removal tool and again and this time click on 'Remove Noise' (or something similar - I'm writing this from memory!). [/list] Neither of these solutions will result in anywhere near perfect results. But it's as good as you're going to get Hope that helps. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FinnDave Posted July 6, 2015 Author Share Posted July 6, 2015 Thanks, I will look at how Audacity can help as I use that as an editing tool already. I wasn't aware it could do more. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Leonard Smalls Posted July 8, 2015 Share Posted July 8, 2015 Full noise removal isn't cheap... You'd need to buy Cedar or Sonic Solutions No Noise - both of which are £000s! However, you might find that a combination of Audacity's noise removal tool, plus notch filtering, with perhaps a noise gate done in a few passes (little bites often sounds better than few big bites!) might sort-of sort it! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FinnDave Posted July 8, 2015 Author Share Posted July 8, 2015 Cheers, I'll see if I can figure these out over the next few days. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DaveFry Posted July 10, 2015 Share Posted July 10, 2015 If you could make a fresh recording of just the interference from the phones , then copy/paste and align them on a seperate track so that they occur at the same time as the original , then a phase reversal of the new track would make the interference disappear . - tricky longshot , i know . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FinnDave Posted July 11, 2015 Author Share Posted July 11, 2015 Hmm, tricky...three phones interacting would not be easy to repeat...I think I'll just carry on recording gigs and hope we get another which hits the spot as well as that one did. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
discreet Posted July 11, 2015 Share Posted July 11, 2015 (edited) [quote name='FinnDave' timestamp='1436607315' post='2819440'] ...I'll just carry on recording gigs and hope we get another which hits the spot as well as that one did. [/quote] The easiest option. I recorded a rehearsal where everything was spot-on perfect for a particular track, except I didn't realise a fan was blowing over the recorder microphones rendering the whole thing unusable with low-frequency noise. The frustrating thing was in the background you could hear that the mix was perfect and everyone was playing brilliantly. After a LOT of messing about we had to let it go. In the end the drummer point-blank refused to play it anyway because he didn't like it. He is utterly wet and a weed. Edited July 11, 2015 by discreet Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Happy Jack Posted July 11, 2015 Share Posted July 11, 2015 [quote name='discreet' timestamp='1436611482' post='2819482'] ... I didn't realise a fan was blowing over the recorder microphones rendering the whole thing unusable with low-frequency noise. [/quote] You need to keep people away from your kit, even when they're fans of yours ... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
discreet Posted July 11, 2015 Share Posted July 11, 2015 [quote name='Happy Jack' timestamp='1436619288' post='2819572'] You need to keep people away from your kit, even when they're fans of yours ... [/quote] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
51m0n Posted July 11, 2015 Share Posted July 11, 2015 In short, no. Not with very noticeable artifacts I'm afraid... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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