Welcome to Help Me podcast, a show designed to help
you launch and grow your podcast. I am your host, Gino. And twice
a week, I will release a new episode with different tips and
trick for launching and growing your podcast. From audio engineering
to planning intentionally to growth tactics, each episode will be a
bite sized tip to help you podcast.
Hey. Good morning, and welcome back to Help Me podcast. Thank you for being
here. Today, we're gonna talk about noise removal
and how noise removal can help your podcast audio sound better.
So first off, what is noise removal? Well,
noise removal is, you know, just like it sounds. It
removes noise from your audio recordings.
And the way in which you use it mostly is it's a software download
that you can either use inside of your digital
audio workstation, the program that you're using to record and
edit audio, or some of them you can actually use as a
stand alone application on your computer. And we'll go into a couple
of the different ones that I use and talk more
specifically about how I use them. But I think it's important to
first note that noise removal is not really
like a magic button or like a
fix all sort of thing. Like, I think having some intention in how
you're using noise removal can help you get more out of
it and can also help you record a little bit better as
well. Because at the end of the day, with all these noise removal plug
ins, most of it is really just kinda masking
some noise or for lessening the effect of some noise. It's
really hard to completely remove everything. And I think, you know, I
always say it's always best to record the best that you can and to have
a really good recording. Because if you have a really good recording, then it makes
everything else easier. You'll have to spend less time editing, less time using
noise removal, and it's just easier overall for you.
But when you do run into a jam and you do have a
recording that you you know, it's really important or there was maybe a big guest
that you interviewed and you really wanna save it and try to make it
sound as good as possible. This is where you can then use noise removal
plug ins and help that recording the best you
can. There's different types of noise removal plug ins out there, and there's different
third parties that make these plug ins. I use Reaper for my digital
audio workstation, my DAW. And you may use a different
one out there, but most of them accept third party plug
ins. And Reaper even comes with a few noise
removal plug ins that come with the program itself. One of them
is called r e a f I r, and you can use that to
remove some noise. It's a little cumbersome and it's not always great.
So I mostly use a lot of third party plug ins, and
these are ones made by Waves and by Isotope.
Izotope makes a pretty industry standard noise removal
software package that comes with multiple different types of
software tools. Is called the RX package, and I
believe they're up to 10 now. I use RX 7, which
is a package full of these noise removal plug
ins. So we have declick, declip,
dcrackle, d s, d d plosive,
de reverb. And there's some other ones in there, like voice
denoise and spectral denoise, mouth declick.
But, basically, these are specific tools to
target a specific type of noise. You know, a lot of times, you'll have, like,
a clicking sound in your recording, and the d click
will help you with that. De plosive is, for when you're trying
to remove plosives. If somebody's not using a pop filter, that
could be helpful. And then the one that I use the
most is D Reverb, which, really is
removing echo. The name's a little little misleading. But, really, what
you're removing is echo in a recording. So sometimes if I'm working
on a client's recording and they're in a big room with a
lot of reflections and there's a lot echo that's present in the recording.
I will throw that de reverb on to try to minimize some of
that echo and reverberation sound from the
recording. And it can be very helpful. Waves also make some plug
ins. Z noise, x noise, x Crackle is
one that I use a lot. And and the simplest one of all time that
I've seen anywhere is the n s one noise
suppressor. And it's literally 1 slider that you
can slide from 0 to all the way up. And
it's basically just, you know, using the amount of noise
removal. And I found that it actually works pretty good. There's obviously
some limitations to it. But as a easy to use noise removal plug
in that's definitely the go to and and the first one to use. Some of
the ones from Isotope, can be a little bit harder to
use and take a little bit more time to be able to dial them in.
But this waves one is just super simple. So if you're if you're new to
noise removal and you've never really used any plug ins before,
I would definitely start with the NS one because I mean, you can get that
thing on sale for, like, 30 or $40, and I pretty much use
it on most of my recordings. So, that that's a really good one
to use. So we talked about what these plug ins and software can
do, but But now I wanna talk about the limitations of these. So a
lot of times, if you're using too much noise removal software, it'll
actually start to degrade the signal that you want to keep. It'll
degrade, like, the voice in your podcast recording. So if you're trying
to use too much noise removal, it'll actually take out parts of the voice that
you're trying to hear. And that's the danger with using some of these noise removal
plug ins is that you have to be able to use enough
of it to remove some of the noise, but not too much of it to
where it starts removing some of the voice that you're trying to keep and you
and you want to hear. Because a lot of times, like, especially you
know, the voice is very dynamic and sometimes people are talking really loud
and pronunciating a lot. And then sometimes people kinda get really quiet and then they,
you know, they kinda, like, whisper something or they trail off at the end of
whatever they're saying. And that's the that's the part where you wanna look
to see if your noise removal plug in is taking taking away something that you
don't wanna be taking away, really. Because when the voice does get quieter
like that, the noise removal could be removing the voice that you
want to keep. And again, I think it's really important to be
understanding the role of noise removal. And it's like that common
phrase you you might hear in, like, if you're ever in the film industry or
the music industry, it's like, oh, we'll fix it in post. Right? We'll fix it
later. We'll we'll record it now. And if it doesn't sound that great, that's
fine. We'll just fix it later. And I think that if you're thinking about it
in that way because you're like, oh, I have noise removal later, whatever, I'll just
fix it later, that's, you know, not the way to be thinking
about recording. I think you always wanna try to capture and record the best
sound that you can. And then these noise removal tools and other
tools that you use to manipulate audio can be used to enhance
what you already have. But at the end of the day, you know, you
can't polish a turret, as they say. And if your recording is
really, really terrible and you try to just put a bunch of noise removal on
it, it's probably not gonna sound good anyways. So really, you're just using
it as like an enhancement tool. Or if there's a mistake or
something, you know, you can try to get rid of that. For example, one time
I had a client who literally left the metronome on as they
were recording. So throughout the entire recording, there was just this, like,
click, click click click click. And it was
obviously super distracting and annoying, but it was a recording that they
wanted to heaps, so I ended up using the DeClick
software, and it removes I was actually kinda surprised. It
removes probably, like, 85% of the noise. And
you can only hear the click every once in a while if she was speaking
in a way that, like, didn't allow the software to recognize
the click. So that actually worked really well. But at the end of the day,
you know, you could still hear a little bit of clicking in the background. And
although it wasn't like you you couldn't tell it was a metronome if you didn't
know that's what it was, but you definitely heard something and, you know, I'm sure
the listeners are probably like, I wonder what that is. But it wasn't as distracting
as it was originally. So, you know, that story is a perfect example of why
you would wanna use noise removal and why it's important to have it
on hand. But you don't wanna be recording every single interview like
that. Right? You don't wanna think like, oh, I'll just leave the metronome on because
I'll just fix it later. Like, no. Obviously, it's easier to
shut that off, make sure there's no noise present when you're
recording and then record and try to record the cleanest sound that you
can. Because the better your original recordings are, the better your
podcast is gonna sound no matter how much you try
to add noise removal or other sorts of EQ
or compression to fix your already recorded
audio. Not to mention that, you know, if you have to do a lot of
stuff in post production when you're editing. You know, it's it's a huge
time suck. So, you know, not only the fact that you wanna try to get
it right at the recording for the best overall sound in
the end, but also just time wise and efficiency. Like,
it takes a lot more time to go and fix something that's you
know, there's an issue with your audio instead of setting things up
and making sure that you're recording properly. It's just it saves you way more time
on the recording properly. It's just it saves you way more time
on the on the back end of things. And you don't wanna have to be
using noise removal plug ins every single time you're recording your podcast.
So it's it's more of an emergency situation or maybe something happened
and, you know, it was an accident or something like that. But the less you
can use the noise removal, the better. But, you know, the reason of
this episode is to explain to you how to use noise removal and
that the option does exist in case you ever need it. So I
hope this was helpful in describing and explaining what noise removal
is. And hopefully, you can use it when you need it and not have to
use it on every single podcast recording. So thank you for listening
as always. I appreciate it, and I will see you on the next episode.
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