Help, How do you clean a sample?

Yanderu

Ruko's Ruffians
Defender of Defoko
Okay, how does one clean a sample? Whilst getting feed back from my critique thread, I was recommended to EQ and clean my samples. What is this and how can it help? Also how do I go about EQ'ing the voice bank? I use audacity just to let you guys know. Please help!
 

Sync_Ye

Ruko's Ruffians
Defender of Defoko
Okay, how does one clean a sample? Whilst getting feed back from my critique thread, I was recommended to EQ and clean my samples. What is this and how can it help? Also how do I go about EQ'ing the voice bank? I use audacity just to let you guys know. Please help!
First you are to take the unwanted noises and noises of the samples by silencing the beginning and end of the samples (but be careful not to silence parts of the phoneme together) audacity has an effect / filter that helps in this "noise removal" select a part where just have the noise and apply the first option of the effect then select all the samples and apply the second option of the effect of noise removal, for the EQ you can also use one that comes in audacity that cons of frequencies from 100 hz down that help to remove some anomalies in case you wanted to add some filter / effect more be careful not to change the samples too much because they can distort in the utau, and also to people who do not like filter in the utau samples, A sample without noises are much better for the utau out that when well equalized almost never cause distortion in the utau, Already in covers cases it is strongly recommended that you use FL Studio, you will have a greater variety of effects to per in the voice of the utau like echo, a better equalizer distortion effects and etc.
 
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WinterdrivE

Ritsu's Renegades
Defender of Defoko
imo its better to just not. You can cause a lot more harm than good, especially if you don't really, really know what you're doing. EQ'ing samples is a bit of a moot point anyways since the vocals are gonna have to be EQ'ed for each song its used in individually. And Audacity's noise removal leaves behind more noise and artifacts than it removes. you're better of just not touching noise removal.
 

Yanderu

Ruko's Ruffians
Defender of Defoko
Thread starter
First you are to take the unwanted noises and noises of the samples by silencing the beginning and end of the samples (but be careful not to silence parts of the phoneme together) audacity has an effect / filter that helps in this "noise removal" select a part where just have the noise and apply the first option of the effect then select all the samples and apply the second option of the effect of noise removal, for the EQ you can also use one that comes in audacity that cons of frequencies from 100 hz down that help to remove some anomalies in case you wanted to add some filter / effect more be careful not to change the samples too much because they can distort in the utau, and also to people who do not like filter in the utau samples, A sample without noises are much better for the utau out that when well equalized almost never cause distortion in the utau, Already in covers cases it is strongly recommended that you use FL Studio, you will have a greater variety of effects to per in the voice of the utau like echo, a better equalizer distortion effects and etc.
imo its better to just not. You can cause a lot more harm than good, especially if you don't really, really know what you're doing. EQ'ing samples is a bit of a moot point anyways since the vocals are gonna have to be EQ'ed for each song its used in individually. And Audacity's noise removal leaves behind more noise and artifacts than it removes. you're better of just not touching noise removal.
Ahhh, thank you both!
 

✧ Elfrida ✧

The Space Witch
Defender of Defoko
Yeah, I'd say only use noise removal if it's a third party noise removal app that actually PROPERLY removes noise. I've tried using all types of settings on the noise removal plugin that comes with audacity in my most current version. It barely removes noise and the sample thats left over sounds even worse than the one with bg noise, like its tinny and stuff. The best thing to do would be to either record in a semi-sound proof area or make a little mini recording studio to place your mic in (I personally do the latter).
 

Awaclus

Ruko's Ruffians
Defender of Defoko
If you mean I'm the person who told you to do that, keep in mind that I don't have any idea whether the problem I was hearing was caused by the samples themselves, it could also be the resampler or your mixing settings causing it, in which case EQing the samples wouldn't help. I was just pointing it out so that you could figure out what was causing it, and potentially fix it at the sample level if that's where it originated from.

As far as noise reduction is concerned, if you have a very bad case of a noisy recording (e.g. because you're using a low quality mic which is noisy on its own, not just because your decent mic into decent preamp is picking up some of your computer's hum from a few meters away), even the noise reduction tool in Audacity can be better than nothing, but it's important to find a balance where you're getting rid of some of the noise while keeping the actual signal mostly intact, instead of trying to get rid of the noise completely and destroying the actual signal in the process. In my experience, having a low sensitivity and 0 frequency smoothing is going to get you the best results, and the residue option is useful when previewing because it lets you listen to what you're removing from the sound (so if you only hear noise and no signal using residue, that means it's safe to switch back to reduce and render that setting).

However, I don't think you necessarily need to do that. If there is noise in the samples, it's definitely not loud enough to be audible in the full mix.

EQing in Audacity is suffering materialized. Instead of Audacity (an audio editor), you're going to need a digital audio workstation, because DAWs are capable of realtime processing which is pretty necessary if you actually want to hear what you're doing. FL Studio was recommended above and I'm also an FL user, but it's definitely not the only option for a DAW and some DAWs (e.g. Tracktion 7 and Cakewalk) are even legally available for free.
 
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