Removing excessive wind noise from recordings?

[musicmadsimon]

Yes I know lay off the sprouts! seriously when I record whistles into cubase there is an almost constant background noise of the air as well as the main notes. I've tried using more tonguing but I don't think I should have to do that. I've altered the position of the mic but can't find one that does the job adequately. On professional CDs and also live performances there seems to be v little. I just noticed in Steinberg Wavelab there's a DeNoiser plugin (similar one in Audacity) that takes a sort of soundprint of the noise to help remove it. I tend to use A large Rode NT2 or medium diaphram Rode NT3 roughly 5" above the sound hole. I just read on the forum that it can be best to aim slightly to the side. I will try this. I do like a breathy sound but this seems excessive. Has anyone any other advice to offer. I've been playing for many years but maybe have a bad blowing technique! Often Chieftain or Sindt whistles Many thanks

[Narzog]

I dont have a ton of experience micing because I cant play masterfully enough to want to do much recording yet. But from my tests, you want the mic to be to your side. You get a lot less Ffffffffff sound. It was the first thing I noticed when I tried recording. And from other research on this forum, people say to generally mic far away if your room is good. What I find interesting is I've seen many recordings that the mic is more in front of them, that dont have tons of "Fffff" sound. And obviously live the mic is in front of them, and also doesnt have this issue so I'm not sure what I'm missing about micing whistles.

[RoberTunes]

I'd go at that problem with two approaches:
1) experiment with mic placement, aimed or located away from the blade/window area where the air is most turbulent, maybe close but to the side and down the length of the tube somewhere, but not facing the end of the tube directly either, which is going to carry much of the breathiness frequencies and air flow.
2) once you have the best mic placement found, record it and then use fine-tuning with a narrow-band (adjustable) parametric EQ to reduce the high end of the frequencies. Only reduce or buffer the minimum to get what's desired in tone. Sweep back and forth with a narrow band to find the sweet spot of where the breathiness is, rather than taking down large frequency ranges, and then reduce that chosen frequency region in volume gradually and see how that goes. That will take some experimenting, which shouldn't be difficult.
You've mentioned some very good condenser microphones, so if you have good EQ software, you're off to the races. Another thing to consider is the frequency range the whistle is in, in regard to other instruments, and how it will sound once mixed. If you have other high frequency instruments going on close by in that range, you may want to adjust the tone of the whistle more (one way or another) in EQ, before mixing tracks down into two-track files. If there are no other instruments or sounds in that whistle frequency range, perhaps less EQ or compression or volume adjustments may be needed, since it has theoretically, more frequency range to operate in. This all reminds me why I got addicted to WaveLab and developed a coffee habit. Dang!

[fatmac]

I would agree, it is most likely down to mic placement, I'm no professional, but I put mine slightly off to one side, about 18" away, seems to work for me.

[GreenWood]

From where I'm looking, if you are able to hear the whistle as an acceptable sound from anywhere or while playing, then it should be possible to do a straight recording with an acceptable sound. So I go with mic placement ideas above all, and have never appreciated the effects of noise elimination of any kind on the actual sound of an instrument, to my view they can only detract, even if the overall sound is then more listenable. It isn't to shun sound processing etc. because everything has its place or reason, just that that should be after all else and for a patient studio type environment should not really be needed at all beyond circuit noise or to clean an occasional excess of any kind in an otherwise good passage. It's easy to give armchair advice though ....

[Krasnojarsk]

Yes, play at an angle, but also be aware that it might be better with something like an SM-57 or SM-58 (also played at an angle). You basically don't want to blow straight into the microphone, and in my experience of both studio recordings and live performance, it's easier to get a clean sound with a dynamic rather than condenser microphone. If you only have a condenser, I'd just try to find an angle where the amount of wind noise, if any, is acceptable to you. Also, like RoberTunes suggested, sweeping an EQ through to find "bad" frequencies can work wonders.

As for noise reduction in general, I can recommend Reaper as well, which is a (basically) free digital audio workstation, https://www.reaper.fm. It can also take a portion of noise and try to filter it out. This is usually not successful with this type of wind noise, however, because it's too variable. But it can do wonders with e.g. spectrally and temporally stable background noise.

[musicmadsimon]

Thank you all SO MUCH for taking the time to help me out. I will experiment more with Mic position and post processing. I'll also try an SM58 and 57 as I have them. If anyone cares to post a photo of the mic position they are suggesting that would be brilliant. cheers

[Tremendouz]

I can't mic from far away because my room isn't acoustically treated so I mic from around 10-15 cm distance. I mostly record low whistles.

I tried pointing the mic somewhere in the middle of the whistle, below the "sound hole", but the sound was bad and the volume of the 2nd octave notes were inconsistent.

If I point the mic towards the sound hole, the sound is quite airy.

So, I tried pointing the mic even higher so it's basically pointing into my mouth instead of the sound hole. The air noise feels lower this way, especially if I turn a tiny bit away so the mic is off-axis