I used to edit podcasts in GarageBand, but switched a few years ago to Apple’s $200 Logic Pro. I don’t use most of Logic’s high-end audio production features, but it’s got a few features that make it much better than GarageBand for my purposes.
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- The Noise Gate is an option down in the Smart Controls’ plug-in area under the “Dynamics” sub-heading. It’s important not to use the Noise Gate too much, however, because it’ll end up destroying the dynamics of your recording. For instance, if you’re playing a guitar solo and need a note to ring out, a Noise Gate will limit the sustain.
- Apr 26, 2016 Very helpful when using many programs so that you don't need a sound gate for each one or if a program doesn't have a sound gate then this will solve your problem. Follow Me: https://twitter.com.
However, GarageBand is perfectly suitable for podcast editing, and don’t let anyone tell you different. Every Mac comes with GarageBand, meaning every Mac user has access to a free multitrack audio editor capable of generating high-quality podcasts. And while it’s true that the latest version of GarageBand (version 10) lacks some of the podcast-specific features of GarageBand 6.0.5 and earlier, it’s not true that you can’t edit a podcast in the current version of GarageBand. You can! (Earlier on Six Colors I wrote about editing podcasts in more depth.)
Jan 05, 2019 How to use the Noise Gate in GarageBand iPhone/iPad (noise reduction). In this video, I show how to turn on the noise gate plugin in GarageBand to reduce background noise between phrases in vocals. Audio plugins for all operating systems (Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, iOS and Android), tagged as Noise Gate. The results are sorted by date added (newest first).
GarageBand 10, in fact, based on the same core set of features as Logic, which means you can take advantage of some plug-ins to make your podcasts sound much better—if you can figure out how to use those features. GarageBand doesn’t make it easy. Let me give you a tour of where these features are and make you some suggestions about how you can use them to make a better podcast in GarageBand 10.
(Please note that while you can use these features for any kind of podcast project, most of the podcasts I produce feature multiple audio tracks—at least one for my microphone and one for a recording from Skype, but often many different microphone tracks from each of my panelists, which they’ve recorded themselves and sent to me.)
Use Smart Controls
GarageBand calls its plug-in interface Smart Controls, and it’s accessible by clicking on the Smart Controls button in the toolbar. It’s on the left side of the toolbar, the icon that’s meant to look like a control dial (but looks a bit more like a quizzical Pac-Man to me). When you click on Smart Controls, the Smart Controls pane opens at the bottom of the screen. By default you’ll see a bunch of dials, because who doesn’t like skeumorphic controls?
Atop the Smart Controls view are two buttons with controls what’s displayed in the space below: Controls and EQ. You can actually set the EQ, which determines what frequencies of sound are emphasized and de-emphasized, in either view. The Controls view also lets you adjust ambience, reverb, and compression—a key concept I’ll come back to in a moment.
This Smart Controls interface isn’t the greatest, so let me explain some of the other buttons you’ll need to use, which are located in the top left corner of the Smart Controls pane. The Information button (the letter
i
inside a circle) will slide out a pane on the left side of the Smart Controls pane. (Yes, this is a lot of panes—you will need to make the GarageBand window as big as you can and probably expand the Smart Controls pane by sliding up the divider between it and the main editing area.)The new left pane displays all of the effects that are being applied to the current track you’ve got selected in the main editing area (you select a track by clicking on the strip on the left side of the editing area), as well as recording settings (useful if you’re recording straight into GarageBand, which most podcasters aren’t). The Plug-ins section is vitally important, because this is where you can stack different effects and make your audio sound different (and ideally, better).
Back to that top left corner of the Smart Controls toolbar. The Master button is also important. When you click it, the entire pane will display the settings not for an individual track, but for your project’s master track. The best way to think of it is that each track has its own set of effects or plug-ins applied to it, and then they’re all mixed together into a single master track which can have effects or plug-ins applied to it, too.
When the Master button is selected (and highlighted in blue), all the effects you select in the Smart Controls window are applied to the master track. When it’s not selected, what you’re seeing are the effects that are being applied to the single track you’ve selected in the main window.
So now we’re oriented. I know, that was ugly, but it had to be done.
Compress your voices
For every podcast I edit, I apply a basic set of plug-ins to make them sound better. Let me show you how to apply my settings within GarageBand and save them as a pre-set so you can apply them quickly without spending time in the ugliness of the Smart Controls pane.
First, we’ll add a compressor. In simple terms, a compressor takes your loudest and quietest sounds and tries to make them similar. Compressing podcast audio can be helpful because sometimes we speak quietly and other times we shout, and compressing a track will make your overall volume more consistent and easier to hear.
Select a track in the editing area and make sure that that Master button is not highlighted in blue. Now click the triangle next to Plug-ins, revealing the plug-ins area in the Smart Controls pane’s left pane. Click in the box to the right of the text “Use to change the sound processing.” This is where you add audio plug-ins. We’ll be adding three.
Depending on your GarageBand settings, Compressor may already be displayed—but not highlighted in blue—meaning that it’s been added but turned off. If that’s the case, move your cursor over the Compressor button to reveal that it’s really three different buttons. The on/off button on the left will let you enable the plug-in by clicking, so do that. Then click the middle button to reveal a floating settings window. (If you don’t see Compressor as an option, click and select Dynamics: Compressor.)
Let’s set Compressor Threshold to -17.0dB, Ratio to 3.1:1, Attack to 9ms, and Gain to 7.0dB. Then click the triangle on the right side of the naming area, which is located at the top of the floating window to the right of the big on/off icon, and choose Save As. Give your compression settings a name, like Podcast Vocals.
These settings are pretty arbitrary; if someone’s really loud, you may want to reduce the Gain setting. You can always save new presets, with names like Podcast Vocals Quiet or even ones tied to particular people, like Podcast Vocals-Jason.
Equalize and gate noise
Our next plug-in is Channel EQ, which may also already be present. (If you need to add it below Compressor, click in the empty space and then choose EQ: Channel EQ.) Move your cursor over the Channel EQ button and click the center button to open a Channel EQ settings window.
Setting a good EQ is a black art, and not one I’m very good at, but it can definitely improve the sound of voices.I would recommend that you click on the triangle in the name window next to the on/off button on the Channel EQ window and, at the very least, try out the Voice > Speaking Voice Improve preset that ships with GarageBand. If EQ is just too confusing, you can also deactivate this plug-in (by clicking that big on/off button or the tiny counterpart you see if you move your cursor over Channel EQ in the plug-ins section.)
Now let’s add a noise gate, which can be useful in hiding background noise when someone’s not speaking. Above the plug-ins section you’ll see a Noise Gate check box and slider that are inactive—for some strange reason, you have to add a Noise Gate plug-in before those controls will work. Click in the plug-ins area below Compressor and Channel EQ and select Dynamics > Noise Gate. Set this to -35dB.
Finally, a lot of GarageBand presets turn on reverb. You don’t want it! It makes everything sound like you’re in an echo chamber. Be sure the Master Reverb and Master Echo sliders are all the way to the left, which means they’re turned off.
Save a preset and set a master compressor
Now that you’ve done all this work, you can save all these settings as a preset so you can easily apply them to all your audio tracks in the future. To do this click on the Library icon at the far left of the main GarageBand toolbar and click the Save button at the bottom of the screen. Give this preset a good name, like Podcast Voice. You’ll see that there’s now a new submenu, User Patches, in the Library. Click on User Patches and you’ll see the preset you just created. If you select another track in your GarageBand project, and then click on that preset, all of the plug-in settings we just created will be applied automatically.
If this is all too complicated, you can download the Podcast.patch file I created. You’ll need to unzip it, then go to the
~/Music/Audio Music Apps/Patches/Audio
folder (create it if it isn’t there) and copy it in. When next you open GarageBand, it should appear for you.There’s just one more thing to do: Apply a compressor to the master track. To do this, click the Master button and make sure the Output button in the center area is selected. You’ll see another set of plug-ins—these are ones that are applied to the final master track, after all your individual tracks are mixed together. I recommend turning on the Compressor plug-in and setting Compressor Threshold to -15.0, Ratio to 2.0:1, Attack to 9.0ms, and Gain to 4dB.
When you’re ready to export your podcast project, use the Share > Export Song to Disk command. I recommend saving an AIFF file and then using a different tool, like iTunes, to compress your podcast as a 64kbps mono file.
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Getting rid of background noise in Garageband is pretty simple, and while there are many more sophisticated plug-ins for noise gating available on the internet, I would say that, from what I’ve experienced thus far, the stock noise gate that comes with Garageband works just fine.
In this tutorial, I’m going to run through how to quickly use a noise gate to eliminate unwanted sounds in a Garageband recording, and I’ll also direct you to a more sophisticated noise gate plug-in.
Moreover, I’ll also show you how to manually go into your vocal tracks and actually delete the undesirable sounds from your recordings, rather than just gating them.
First things first, I’ll show you how to set up a simple gate.
How To Set Up A Noise Gate
With Garageband open,
1) Go down into the Smart Controls with your vocal track selected, and notice the little box and the text beside it that says, “Noise Gate.”
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2) Check the box off, meaning that now, your noise gate is turned on.
3) Slide the noise gate bar over to the desired dB setting until the noise has been completely eliminated – usually between -50dB and -15dB
You can choose at which rate you’re going to set the noise gate, and of course, it really depends on what you’ve recorded and how loud the signal is, however, there is typically a range which sounds the best, and I would say that between -50dB and -15dB is the best area to be in.
For instance, on the latest track that I mixed for a client, I set the Noise Gate to around -20dB, and I’m sure that the client used a gate when he was recording as well.
Be careful not to turn the noise gate up so much that you eliminate all of the little sounds (transients) that make it sound authentic and human unless your goal is to make it sound “too perfect.”
Moreover, you might find that too much gating will create a choppy vocal during a quieter part of the singing/speaking. In combination with a compressor, the noise gate is very useful.
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If you’ve used a compressor to increase the quiet sounds and decrease the loud sounds, you might find that it brings up the undesirable sounds in the background.
In this case, you can use the Noise Gate after the compressor rather than before.
Here’s what I mean by the order of the plug-ins in the signal chain – the image below illustrates what I’m talking about.
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Also, notice that the Noise Gate comes with its very own pre-sets in Garageband.
Click the Noise Gate plug-in the Smart Controls, and then in the Drop-Down menu, you can see the presets that come with it.
There are seven of them: Acoustic Bass Gate, Backing Vocal Gate, Electric Bass Gate, Fast Gate, Hard Floor Noise Cut, Percussion Gate, as well as Tighten Up.
How To Eliminate Unwanted Background Noise Manually
In many cases, you might find that it’s better to move to actually go into the vocal track and eliminate the unwanted sounds manually, rather than gating merely everything.
Here’s how to do this:
1) Double click the Audio Recording in the Workspace to highlight it. Garageband software free download for windows 7.
2) Zoom in to the track by using the Zoom function on your trackpad.
Zooming in on the audio file in the Smart Controls will allow you to see all of the little noises in the wave format.
3) Isolate the parts of the audio recording that you want to get rid of, and then use the (Command + T) function to actually cut them out.
a) Use the (Command + T) function to cut the first offending part.
b) Then move the Rule over to the next part and use the (Command + T) function again.
You’ve created a little square, and you can select the square, and then delete it from the audio track entirely.
By doing this manually, we can actually delete the offending parts straight up, including the moment the singer takes a breath before starting to sing.
You can isolate the breath in the audio track and then delete it.
Once you’ve done this, you’re going to find that you run into problems later, however, when it comes to whether you want to duplicate that very same audio region and then loop it.
For instance, if you go through your vocal track, deleting each undesirable audio region, you’ll notice that you can’t loop it, due to the fact you deleted the parts out of it, essentially separating the vocal track from each other, and making it more than one track, rather than all combined as one.
If you try to use the (Command + J) function to merge the tracks together again, you’ll be right back where you started – the breaths and unwanted noises included, however, there is a way of getting around this.
Through the creation of a brand new audio file, as well as the (Command + J) function, you can actually make a new and improved audio file where the breaths and all of the undesired sounds have been eliminated, however, if you try and do it without creating a brand new file, the (Command + J) function will just combine the tracks together and those mistakes and little errors that you deleted before will come right back again.
This is a little bit tricky, so pay close attention.
How To Create A New Background Noise-Free Vocal Track
At this stage, you’ve gone through your vocal track and cut out all of the undesirable sounds, including the unwanted breathing right before the vocalist sung their first word.
1) Use the (Command + D) function to create an entirely new track with duplicate settings.
2) Copy and Select all of the edited vocal track, the one where you’ve eliminated all of the undesirable sounds, and then copy and paste it into the new Track Region, which is going to look like what you can see in the image below.
3) Select the new audio track and use the (Command + J) function to create an entirely new audio region without the unwanted noises and breathing.
Garageband will bring up a warning that says that for a new file to be created out of “noncontiguous” audio, a new track has to be created.
It’s worth noting that if you don’t get this warning sign, then what’s going to happen is that you’re just going to merge the tracks together again and wind up with very same breaths, errors, and background noise in the new track.
You want to click Ok, and then voila, you have a brand new track without the breathing and mistakes, and then you loop it however much you want.
Noise Gate Plug-Ins
In terms of what plug-ins you can actually get your hands on, I would say the most popular free plug-in for Noise Gates is the Bob Perry Noise gate which can be found on VST4Free at the link here.
This noise gate is more sophisticated than the stock plug-in that comes with Garageband, and it’s more realistic to the analog noise gates that you’d actually see in a professional recording studio or in a musician’s home.
Similar to the compressor, it has a few different parameters, including the Threshold, Attack, Hold, Release, and then the Range.
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It has a few other parameters as well, including two toggle switches on the left and right-hand side.
On the left side, it has the “Curve” toggle switch.
The curve has three parameters, Curve, Log, and S-Curve
And then on the right side, there is the “Source” toggle switch.
This toggle switch goes back and forth from Side Chain and Channel.
We’ll talk about how to set up a more sophisticated noise gate plug-in in the future, as well as some of the other functions of a gate.
YouTube Video Tutorial
Conclusion
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I hope this was helpful to you. In the future, I’ll dive deep into the Noise Gate, its parameters, and how to really get the best out of one.