AI Tools for enhancing audio recordings

[Joerg Polzfusz]

Hi!

Did anyone played around with tools like this that use AI to remove background noise, echoes etc. from voice recordings?

https://podcast.adobe.com/enhance

 

[Brian Drysdale]

I did some tests for separating the dialogue from the music on an old film that we're track laying again for copyright reasons. It worked pretty well with Lalal.ai: https://www.lalal.ai/

[Dan Hasson]

On 9/8/2023 at 9:39 PM, Joerg Polzfusz said:

Hi!

Did anyone played around with tools like this that use AI to remove background noise, echoes etc. from voice recordings?

https://podcast.adobe.com/enhance

 

I played around with Adobe Podcast on some various audio files.

• One was dialogue from a boom on a shoot. It sounded great anyway and we had a fantastic on set mixer. However, there was some natural city noise in the background. The AI did a great job of removing that noise but gave the vocal an odd hum.
• The second was on audio from an iPhone video clip I filmed just a friend, nothing professional for any film, from about 8 years ago. Again, the AI removed background noises but made the voice sound like they had a lisp.

So, my experience (although I don't really work in sound at all) was it always had a pay off eg can remove police sirens but gives the dialogue a humming sound.

 

I wonder if Adobe will release a more sophisticated version at some point with maybe more controls than there currently are. 

I guess for anything more professional like Peter Jackson and his team used on the Beatles doc and the new song won't be openly available for a while or will cost a lot? Maybe I'm wrong though.

[Stewart McLain]

I recently used Izotope Elements for this purpose on a project.  My results were similar to Dan's.  If you push it too hard, you'll wind up with some goofy artifacts.  My approach was to push until I heard something nasty and then pull back a little and just settle for however much background reduction that was. Between that and laying down a track of consitent room tone I got results I could live with.  But you might be pickier than I am.  And it bears noting that I am not an expert - a more experienced person would probably use this same tool and get better results than I did.

I did come across some advice that recommended doing multiple passes through the effect (like one insert after another in your DAW) at lower levels of reduction rather than trying to remove all background sound in a single pass.  Kind of like woodworking,  using gradually larger router bits rather than trying to use a great big one right from the start.

The full version of Izotope RX10 is expensive but is used by a lot of postproduction engineers.  I actually just looked it up and it's on sale for half price right now:  https://www.izotope.com/en/deals.html  

[Joerg Polzfusz]

Thanks, Dan and Steve!

[Brian Drysdale]

Here's a review of AI software: https://www.provideocoalition.com/review-waves-clarity-vx/