Help Me Podcast

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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