Some free beta noise reduction software.

I've been working on some specialised noise reduction software for pipe samples. It's at a stage now where I'm very happy with it's performance and thought I would get some opinions from other sample set creators.

Please note that the software is BETA! It will only run on Windows platforms and is compiled as a console application (i.e. it runs from the command prompt). It only accepts MONO "RAW" FLOATING POINT PCM input files. I have bundled it as a self extracting archive with a noise profile and a few pipe samples from my next free sample set for you to have a play around with. :-)

Please do not ask me for support of stereo/wave files/a GUI/faster performance - this is only a beta to get feedback on how the algorithm performs... To my ears, comparable levels of noise reduction sound better with this tool's algorithm than with Cool Edit's noise reduction.

The application really shows its power in low frequency pipes.

I look forward to getting some feedback.

!Download the application here!

Hi Nick,

I got it working and also think that it is better than/on par with Cool Edit's noise reduction when using the optional parameters to tweak the NR. Specifying the /sr (samplerate) seemed to make a significant difference to my ears... I'll play some more during the week and post again .

Thanks,

GrahamG

Hi Graham,

Maybe I've been away from DOS for too long but I couldn't get anything except a listing of commands, etc. What were the exact command lines that you used?

Thanks...
John

Hi John,

You first need to create a 'noise template'. Create a RAW file of a portion of your sample that is 'silent'. Nick called his 'noise.raw'. Create a noise template file using 'noise.raw' by entering:
nr.exe gnp /i noise.raw /o template.nrt

This will create the template file that will be used in the noise reduction.

Now to perform the noise reduction enter:
nr.exe nr /i sample.raw /o processedsample.raw /nrt template.nrt

followed by whatever other optional parameters you want to test
/sr /fttsize /cutoff etc.

Hope this helps!

GrahamG

Hi Graham,

Your command lines worked fine - Thanks.

I can't use the supplied samples because Creative Wave Studio only goes to 48000 so I used it to convert .WAV files to .RAW. The NR program accepted them but, when I converted back to .WAV, I got a file with no sound. Maybe I can't convert using Creative Wave Studio?

John

Hi all.

I thought I would bump this thread to let developers know that I am now using this software primarily for the base noise reduction of my samples.

It has performed so well that some of the samples I recorded quite a while ago that I were unable to be used due to too much background noise may now be usable.

The application is still being developed but it's probably worth checking out now. The main noise reduction codebase doesn't have that much more I can put into it. Within the next few weeks it will probably jump another version and I'll release a guide for using it optimally to get the best results.

http://www.appletonit.com.au/nickspage/software_nr.html

If anyone knows of a good site for posting this sort of software, I would appreciate a link...

Nick.

Hi Nick,

I tried using your noise reduction program but it doesn't seem to recognise WAV files, even though version 0.7b says it does. Maybe I'm doing something wrong?

John

Hi John,

It would be useful for me if you could post the error message you are getting using 0.7b so I can look for the cause.

I just uploaded 0.8b which contains a fix to a bug in the wave handling code which was preventing a number of wave files from opening. You can download it *here*. You will have to pardon the sketchy wave file support at the moment, I am still working the majority of the time using RAW files (at least for output) as they are easier to preview while the software is actually writing to one.

At the moment, only 32bit IEEE floating point wave files will load. This seems to be the most common format that recordings will be saved in. If the files you are working with do not have samples in this form, let me know what formats you are working with and I will enable them and release a sub-version with them enabled. It just means adding a few conversion routines as all of the calculations in the program are done using 64bit double precision floating point numbers.

I haven't bothered adding much to the software in the last week as I've been using it to process the samples for my next sample set to try get an idea of how it performs and how 'natural' the results sound. The results so far are very good and I shall probably post up a few audio demos soon in the next week or so.

But again, please let me know what the errors are so I can search for where they are occuring.

Ta,

Nick

I record in 24-bit integer; there is no benefit in using 32-bit float at that stage as 24 bits is what comes out of the ADC in the interface. Some software doesn't handle 24-bit files as smoothly as floats (e.g. CoolEdit/Audition), but that shouldn't be taken as typical as other software does (e.g. WaveLab).

Paul

You can download it *here*.

Just to let you know that version 0.8b is not yet visible on your download page.

All the best and thanks for sharing this tool.

Reflecting on Pauls comments and the probability of people using other wave formats, I have enabled support for 16, 24 and 32 bit integer format PCM wave files for input and output. The slightly updated version 0.9b is now available for download *here*.

Erikds, as the pages on my website don't contain "dynamic" content, the pages may be being cached in your web browser and you might want to refresh the page (generally F5).

Nick.

as the pages on my website don't contain "dynamic" content, the pages may be being cached in your web browser and you might want to refresh the page (generally F5).

Thanks for the tip, it did the trick.
And sorry for the trouble caused.

All the best.

as the pages on my website don't contain "dynamic" content, the pages may be being cached in your web browser and you might want to refresh the page (generally F5).

Thanks for the tip, it did the trick.
And sorry for the trouble caused.

All the best.

No trouble caused at all.

Thanks for the update!

Paul

I have just posted up a usage guide for using the program effectively.

I would recommend that anyone using the software read over the GNP section as it outlines a good way for selecting FFT sizes based on the sample rates of your input data.

Have a read here.

Nick.