Noise reduction / PCA (principle component analysis) (1 Viewer)

[leonardo_simon]

Technical question — I’ve been reading about noise reduction in bird song recordings and most of the information I’ve found relates to tweaking high and low pass filters (and the inherent limitations of that approach).

Does any consumer software use / has anyone tried PCA / ICA (principle component analysis, independent component analysis) to reduce noise in bird recordings? (E.g. remove background noise to make it sound better)


I see this type of approach used for identifying birds from their songs…. https://pakjas.com.pk/papers/3465.pdf
& it’s used for biomedical applications too: (for example: Blind noise reduction for multisensory signals using ICA and subspace filtering, with application to EEG analysis - PubMed)

Any ornithological pointers would be helpful. thanks

 

[Deans Sanctuary]

The obvious Cornell Labs or contact Jim Stevenson at Galveston Ornithological Society...he checks his emails daily.

 

[Jon.Bryant]

Not sure it is the same thing, but I have been using Steinberg’s Spectral Layers Pro. This has the ability to split a music recording into components. For wildlife recordings it can split the recording into three parts (tonal - horizontal elements on the spectrogram, transients - vertical elements, and noise). The AI engine can rebuild noise hidden behind the transients and tonal elements. Each of the three elements appears on a separate layer which can be individually edited - for instance you can reduce the noise level or delete a transient click.

You can also create layers for other stuff - say use the magic selection tool to copy to a new layer an insect buzz, then reduce the sound level on that layer.

I find it works well, but not perfect. It sometimes needs a little work to delete artefacts that otherwise sound a bit unnatural.

 

[leonardo_simon]

Thanks ever so much for that — Ive had a look at the website and it says they are using “artificial intelligence” to achieve noise reduction - which essentially is the answer to my question (ICA/PCA are some of the techniques used in artificial intelligence + loads of others)…. I will message them to find out more.

 

[Borjam]

Apart from the software Jon mentions, which is great, you can try iZotope's RX (available in several editions and pay attention to price reduction offers) or Soundhack's Spectral Shapers.

It mostly works as a lot of narrow band noise gates. It won't work miracles but it can provide a more than reasonable noise reduction.

https://www.soundhack.com/spectral-shapers/