Re: Cleaning and preventing fly sounds in recordings

["Avocet" madl74]

Eric,

Flies are a part of the environment we are recording, but can be too
dominant when they land and take off from the windshield because they
are so close. I think they may be attracted by the fur. Anything that
keeps them further away will help, like Dan's folding clothes hamper,
or even a mosquito net.

I often suggest mounting mics low down and a simple net cover over
bendy tentpoles would work provided you can keep the flies out of it.
:-)

For existing recordings if the buzz is at a near constant frequency,
you could use a notch filter to reduce the sound. What I would try is
to lay a parallel track with the filter, and do a quick cross-fade in
and out, leaving enough of the fly in to mask the patch.

I use Audacity and how I would go about this is to get the buzz
frequency from a spectrogram and construct an equalisation notch
filter for that frequency.

David

David Brinicombe
North Devon, UK
Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum - Ambrose Bierce