Skip to main content

Is there any way in Sound forge to break the seperate freqencies, to indivual insturment sounds. With any of the tools or effects? Ex. noise gate

Topic Tags

Comments

schizojames Mon, 05/23/2005 - 00:17

You would have to consult Walters. He used to post here (a lot).

If you have a couple of free months, it is thoretically possible. The process would involve using a 6-point eq with automatable frequency and boost/cut settings, finding the median note of each instrument (hopefully they are not playing too many chords), boosting that specific frequency and the corresponding harmonics, and automating these points together so that you can make the adjustments as the melody/harmony/whatever moves up and down in pitch and foreward in time. Then you would have to run that through "Floorfish" by Digital Fish Phones or some comparable expander and then perhaps a gate to filter out all unnecessary frequencies and save that as its own file. Then go back and do it for the rest of the instruments.

The result will most likely be less-than-satisfactory, as John here pointed out...and though it may result in some "obscure and detached process daps" from a few coder-musicians...it seems like too much work for something that might not be worth the time or sound good at all. I suggest learning the part and recording it on those instruments.

Yes...in theory.

JoeH Tue, 05/24/2005 - 16:07

That Dave Collins thing is fascinating, but I wonder if the results aren't done as a direct result of each mic's positioning (as per the listening options) more than just a random attempt to pull out the variuos sources indiscriminantly.

In other words, I suspect the version with the isolated police siren worked the best was because the police siren was optimized during the recording relative to the others.

All in all, it's a good demo, but I'm sure it's very painstaking and time consuming; and for all that work, it's probably better off redoing it on multitrack and/or midi with separate tracks.

Like colors that all go into mixed paint, it's a nightmare trying to separate two or more sound sources, if it can be done at all.

Of course, on the CSI shows, they make it look possible, with even a crappy cell phone recording. I almost threw the remoate at the TV the night they had the sound tech "Separate" the background rain from the train sounds from the boat horn from the highway noise from the victim's screams. PU-LEEZE. It's as big a misconception as all those "enhanced" and zoomed-in highly detailed survielance photos from crappy videos. It just don't WORK that way, once it's mixed. Sorry, no.

JoeH Tue, 05/24/2005 - 20:32

I don't doubt that at all, but let's be honest......350 line b&w grainy video in a low light situation will NEVER yield zoomed in details like badge numbers, reflections in someone's eyeballs, and a host of other nonsense they occasionally perpetrate on those shows.

Don't get me wrong, the CSI shows are some of my favorite guilty pleasures, but yikes.... All that "enhance" stuff is just hokum. If the image isn't being captured in the first place, there's nothing, not even pixels to pull details from. It's just not there. Same with trying to extract hi res sonic details from 8k mono cell phone calls, etc.