How to Reduce Wind Noise from Field Recording with ADX SVC

Nov 21, 2016ADX Pro Tips, ADX Technology, Blog

Have you ever needed to remove wind noise from a recording of dialogue or speech? Wind is notoriously tricky to attenuate in audio recordings, as it wreaks havoc on the entire frequency spectrum, from low end bumps to high end hiss. Wind is also variable noise, so you can’t learn a sample of it and apply it to the entire file. All of this means that noise reduction tools often affect the speech as much as the wind, rendering the clip unusable. ADX SVC (Speech Volume Control) automatically identifies speech and separates it from background noise, allowing you to control wind noise and speech independently.

Here’s how to preserve speech and reduce wind noise using ADX SVC. Follow along step-by-step, or watch the video walkthrough:

SVC is compatible with these DAWs. Regardless of your DAW, the same simple steps apply.

STEP 1: Acquire the original mix

In this example, a weather reporter is speaking outside during an extreme storm with strong winds. First load the clip into your DAW – in this example we’re using Logic Pro X. Choose SVC from the track FX list and activate it. Then play through the audio clip. You can also use offline bounce if this is a feature in your DAW.

overview

 

STEP 2: Set options

Choose the Pitch Range of the speech in your clip. In this case, we select the Male preset from the Speech Settings and then make a small adjustment to bring the low frequency down to 60 Hz.

pitch

 

Then select Separation options to choose which algorithms are applied to the process. For this example we’ll only select AVAD (automatic voice activity detection) which will apply the processing only where speech is detected (as opposed to throughout the entire clip).

separationoptions

STEP 3: Separate
Press Separate and the audio is analyzed and the speech identified and separated from the wind noise.

separate

STEP 4: Control

Turn down the wind noise and/or turn up the speech to find a good balance of clear speech with the least noise.

control

Have an idea for a future video tutorial? Let us know at support@audionamix.com.