Slight synthetic noise on voice after noise reduction

[Mark R]

Hi All

 

New here. Well, what can I see - Wavepad is clearly a great piece of software and I have only been using it for a couple of days on trial.

 

I have a question about noise reduction.

 

Last night (UK time) I recorded a simple 20 seconds of vocals. I use a reasonably cheap litttle microphone, plugged into the mic spocket of a quite high spec PC. The overall ambient level of noise was low except for the hum of the PC cooling fan etc.

 

The recorded voice sounded OK but was a bit noisy - so I applied noise reduction using spectral subtraction followed by noise gating. I was impressed with the results - as heard through my PC speakers...

 

Anyway, this morning I played the same file back through head phones. I was not so impressed with the result. Where I was not speakng the audio track was almost silent - however as I was speaking I noted a high frequency synthetic sound in the background following my vocals - it was not present where there was silence. Its hard to describe but gives a slight background 'Robot' / 'whispery' sound to the vocal track.

 

What could this be - my hunch is that I over processed the voice (i.e. noise reduction is good but not that good) - perhaps I need to wind it back a little and still except some background ?

 

I had thought about leaving a longer silent gap before speaking and then taking a noise sample before subtraction?

 

I guess the output will only be as good as the input so I do accept that the mic, sound card, PC internals will not help.

 

Basically I am am looking to do is to produce some clean spoken audio tracks to upload toa website. Some tips would be much appreciated !!

 

CHEERS

 

Mark