Ableton Forum

Soundtrack pro has a handy little tool for getting rid of unwanted background noise during interviews etc. It allows you to designate a snippet of the audio file and it removes the corresponding frequency range from the rest of the clip. It's fine tuneable and does a pretty great job.

My question is, is there an equivalent in Ableton? Sure I could fiddle with the EQ but it's a whole lot more time consuming (unless there's a trick I'm missing) and the noise remover does a better job than I'm capable of with EQ at this stage.

Any suggestions?

No. This type of tool is more associated with audio editors, hence Soundtrack Pro, Soundforge , Wavelab, Bias Peak etc all have this type of tool. They also have declickers, denoisers etc.

The only other DAWS which include it are the really expensive high end DAWS such as Sequoia, Pyramix and SaDie etc which have Cedar Retouch or Algorithmix Renovator. These tools are also available as vsts or pro tools plugins but cost upwards of $2000 and typically do more than the consumer 'sound soap' kind of plugins.

PLacidBasilisk wrote:Any suggestions?

You can use noise reduction plug-ins, such as Izotope RX, BIAS SoundSoap Pro or WaveArts MR Noise, which is what I personally prefer for tonal noise reduction. If you want to de-click, or reduce hum noise, you may want to try WaveArts MR Declick or WaveArts MR Hum. There are also noise reduction plug-ins from Waves, but I do not find them successful in this department.

Please note that, however, all of these are external plug-ins and are available separately from Ableton Live.

Andrejs

What's the reason that this kind of function isn't included in Ableton? Because it would be difficult to implement? Because Live users wouldn't have much use for it?

It seems like a pretty helpful tool which I wish I had known about earlier.

PLacidBasilisk wrote:What's the reason that this kind of function isn't included in Ableton? Because it would be difficult to implement? Because Live users wouldn't have much use for it?

It seems like a pretty helpful tool which I wish I had known about earlier.

Probably not that much of common use, 99% I ever used it was video not music related. There are Izotope plugins - Sony,Adobe products have them include d but if you want to do it seriously standalone RX is much better. Waves must be the best,since that is where they come from as step child of Mossad.

rikhyray wrote:Waves must be the best,since that is where they come from as step child of Mossad.

I do not want to start plug-in debate, but in my experience Waves are far away from the best when it comes to noise reduction.

Andrejs

Image Line's Edison, which is included in FL Studio, does a great job. It's noise removal tool is based upon iZotope's RX technology. Edison is available in VST format for $99. Elevayta's Klean Boy is $29.95. I've never used it, but I do have some other Elevayta products with which I am pleased. Schwa's Spectro is nice, costs $50.00, but it takes too much work to do a good job. It's not nearly as easy as Edison's tool.