Remove "silence" or mute?

[DamonD]

Hey...

A quick question as to a preferred method (less CPU load, easier on the engine, cleaner, etc...) of removing "silence" between actual recorded music.

I have some more tracks just transferred to digital from 1" 16track tape, and am going through getting ready to remix them and I'm finding a bunch of noise, coughing, clearing of throats, string noise, banter, humming along to parts, etc... on some of the tracks in between the actual recorded "music". Some could even be a few seconds and some longer, at a time.

My neurosis is causing me to have to remove that stuff before mixing down, although listening to them, they do bring back memories from 15 - 20yrs ago in the studio. :)

I've tried the "Remove Silence" feature and that does work, although I generally have to go back and bring some stuff back right before the recorded part. And redoing things a few times.
And I've also spent lots of time removing the parts and being left with dozens upon dozens of regions.
And have started muting the parts and leaving some the of the original 16 regions as they were when I first imported.

So is any technique better or worse than the other? I would love to save time overall.

Thanx
Damon

[Cary B. Cornett]

I have some more tracks just transferred to digital from 1" 16track tape, and am going through getting ready to remix them and I'm finding a bunch of noise, coughing, clearing of throats, string noise, banter, humming along to parts, etc... on some of the tracks in between the actual recorded "music". Some could even be a few seconds and some longer, at a time.

My neurosis is causing me to have to remove that stuff before mixing down...
I can tell you that some of the top engineers, back when we were all working "analog", would not say you were being neurotic. It was not unusual, with major recording projects, to go through a "cleanup" process on the multitrack master tape before mixdown, carefully erasing things like coughs and other odd noises from the tracks. Some tape machines actually had a "spot erase" feature for just that purpose. Today, editing to a microscopic level in that way is pretty much SOP for some folks.


I've tried the "Remove Silence" feature and that does work, although I generally have to go back and bring some stuff back right before the recorded part. And redoing things a few times.
And I've also spent lots of time removing the parts and being left with dozens upon dozens of regions.
So is any technique better or worse than the other? I would love to save time overall.
Usually, the most time-efficient way is to automate what you can, then fine-tune manually, as you have described. I personally am selective about when to "strip silence" automatically from a track, and when I use it I still generally have to make some manual "tweaks" afterwards. If I'm needing only tens of edits as opposed to hundreds, I'm more likely to do each edit "by hand" in the first place.

[brettbrandon]

Are the noises too loud to use a noisegate to keep them out?

[Cary B. Cornett]

Are the noises too loud to use a noisegate to keep them out? Sometimes a noise gate can be adjusted to do what you want... and sometimes it can't. For live mixing, using noise gates makes sense. For mixing a recording, where details are more important because the same exact performance will be heard many times, often it simply makes more sense to edit.

In some cases, such as "gating" drums to reduce leakage (such as cymbals into tom mics, hat into snare mic, etc.), I will use the gate settings for automating region splits/edits on a track, then go back and fix, by hand, the spots where that doesn't quite work; I will most often do this with the snare track. Where toms or tom fills only happen occasionally, I will generally edit the tom tracks by hand, which works better for keeping the "ringout" of the tom hits.

[Bob L]

Don't forget to add softedges to the edited regions so the noise floor does not pop in and out at the edit points.

Bob L

[Burkeville]

The soft edge I first heard coined as way to combat "zipper noise" by Bob Lentini at a seminar in Vegas. Some people call it "zero cross".

[Bob L]

The softedge feature is quite different than zero cross edits... it is a way to automatically ramp the edges of a region up and down.

Bob L

[Dave Labrecque]

The soft edge I first heard coined as way to combat "zipper noise" by Bob Lentini at a seminar in Vegas. Some people call it "zero cross".

Zipper noise is about the way sudden stair-stepping volume changes can introduce audible distortion.

SoftEdges can be used to create crossfades at edit points that would otherwise cause a tick or pop sound because of a single, sudden change in the resulting waveform. Another way to avoid the pop sound is to edit only on zero-energy-cross points in the waveforms.

[Sean McCoy]

My preference is to always edit the regions and leave only the sections I want in the mix. This is such an easy and intuitive process in SS that it's usually much faster than trying to set up anything to handle it automatically. It also ensures that you don't accidentally clip something off, and gives a nice visual reference for what's going on in the mix timeline. As Bob mentioned, add softedges to everything to make sure you get smooth ins and outs with no clicks.

[DamonD]

The softedge feature is quite different than zero cross edits... it is a way to automatically ramp the edges of a region up and down.

Bob L

Hey Bob.

I'll have to work with SoftEdge. I haven't used them in any project as of yet. But it sounds like it'll cure some of the ills. I always tried automated fades and mutes.

There are some audible blips I noticed in some tracks during punch-ins, would cutting the track at the noise, or before or after, then use SoftEdge on both sides?

Thanx again
Damon

[Sean McCoy]

You can have blips at punch points because of mismatched audio, which often requires adjusting the in point one way or the other. Sometimes it just means try again, or it's just not a good spot for a punch. Small clicks at the front or back of "silent" sections are usually due to low-level noise simply missing the zero crossing. With the former, rough punches can often be smoothed by experimenting with different crossfade times and proportions. With the latter, tiny amounts (1-2 ms) will usually eliminate all clicks. Either way, softedge is your friend, and it's lightning fast.

[Ian Alexander]

With softedge, be aware that the fade starts before the edge of the region and ends after the edge of the region. If you're eliminating a cough, for example, you can't end the region just before the cough. The ramp down of the softedge will still include the cough, at about half volume. You'll get used to moving the cut point back enough that the softedge will have the level down to zero before the cough starts. In reading about softedges in the help file, you'll also see that you can vary the length of the fade by how far back you put the cursor before hitting the X key. If you like the rate of the fade, but still get a bit of the noise, just Alt-drag the region boundary until you can't hear it anymore.

Another nice feature that I didn't know about until reading about it here, is Altering MT Entry Data Within Boundaries. For your cough, use K to cut the region before and after the cough. Shift-Right-Drag within the new little region until the cough is replaced by the track ambience before or after the cough. Benefits include no change in timing and no exit and return of room tone.

[Tom Roberts]

I've discovered that no matter what software tool you use, or how intelligently you have it adjusted, you usually have to go back and tweak many of the edges created by "strip silence" type of functions.

So I find it easier just to make it a manual operation to get rid of coughs, etc. I don't get too crazy about it.

While mixing a recording of a live performance, I don't bother with the leakage into the vocal mics. It's all part of the stage sound, and just mix around it ... maybe duck it a bit in between vocal lines to compensate for what a compressor may be adding.

Analog habits sometimes still sound better in the big picture.

Thomas

[Carl G.]

Hey Bob.

I'll have to work with SoftEdge. I haven't used them in any project as of yet. But it sounds like it'll cure some of the ills. I always tried automated fades and mutes.

There are some audible blips I noticed in some tracks during punch-ins, would cutting the track at the noise, or before or after, then use SoftEdge on both sides?

Thanx again
Damon

Damon, you might try setting up some quick 'fade-out/fade-in automations for the automation gallery. For me this works far faster, better, and more flexible than SoftEdge. I arrange F-Keys so my automation gallery is directly beneath the middle of the MT for quick highlight of the MT (area for edit), and then move the mouse a minimal distance from the timeline to the "Insert to MT" (of the gallery) and bham! Done! If I don't like... just press delete key (while still highlighted) and insert a different saved automation from gallery. I set them up in progressive db fader steps and slopes.... and do the same for EQ... for filtering, etc. (which SoftEdge doesn't do). SoftEdge works miracles too... but I find the automation gallery route can solve things that SoftEdge cannot and very quickly too.