Removing Reverb

Question

is there any technique of removing reverb from a sound clip with out altering the original clip?

Answer 1

There's a couple of things you can do to reduce reverb.

What sort of equipment and plugins do you have?

A multiband compressor will certainly do a good job. A simpler option (that I found quite excellent) was SPL's De-Verb. Simple and effective.

Is it reverb that is a problem or is something off mic? There's little you can do about the latter.

Ian

I did a quick demo for De-Verb.

Link here

Answer 2

This question is very common, and you can find elements of answer here Matching Dialogue between different takes or there Getting rid of room sound on a voice recording? .

Basically, your tools to fix problematic production sound are multiband compression/expansion, EQ and some more advanced processes like the ones addressed in the second topic I provided you with. But again, not a lot you can do, you can make things less worse and I've had a good experience on a film I made earlier this year.

Answer 3

Some good advice above however if you approach the task with the following in mind you'll be happier with your efforts.

Removing reverb from a "continuous sound" i.e. a train of impulses like speech or music where the previous envelope causes the reverb envelope to merge with the next direct sound envelope, is like trying to remove the egg from a cake :-)

If there is sufficient gap between the direct sound and the reverberation curve, i.e. after the 1st or 2nd early reflections you stand a good chance.

If the mic is at or beyond the "critical distance" you have very little chance.

James

Answer 4

Hi Matt I know this tutorial is in Spanish, but you will get the idea hope is useful. Michel

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jdgr8ZnNvlE&feature=player_embedded

Answer 5

I saw the multi-band compression comment - that can help - but I know that it would be around the same mid-range frequencies in the tails. My first try would be by using a gate to remove the tails, as they would be lower in amplitude. Maybe use the MBC to pull down the extraneous, and really, if you want to get down to surgical - use iZotope RX to erase the non-transient information using the spectrograph and scrub out tool. That software works wonders.

-Curtis

Answer 6

I've gotten good results using multi-band expansion plug-ins like Waves C4. It's useful because you're not cutting the tail, but simply attenuating it so that the decay happens faster. You aren't going to be able to get rid of all of it, but you can definitely reduce the presence of the reverberation.

Answer 7

Dyvision's plugin can be useful. I actually use it as a noise reduction effect, particularly for removing low level outdoors rumble and noise, indeed I get better results from it than plugins costing many times more.

http://www.dyvision.co.uk/reverbremover.html

Answer 8

Reverb removing for Zynaptiq UNVEIL.

Answer 9

I've always been pleasantly surprised with what de-verb can do. You can still use it do much and screw things up but it's been a life saver a few times. There are times when tools that just do one thing are great.

Answer 10

For anyone having Native Instruments komplete you can use the Transient Master and set Sustain to -100 while coupling that with a mono signal of the audio you are trying to de-reverb. You might be able to mimic this by using a multiband compressor with right settings as already mentioned.

So Original signal -> make it mono -> transient master.

In Ableton Live I use a rack setup to adjust mid/side ratio (how close to mono the signal is) simultaneously with sustain amount (so both parameters are controlled by the same knob). This gives me a 1knob effect for the de-reverb depth.

It works pretty well and just going mono helps a lot in many cases!