Freesound Forums

I would like to share a simple way to deal with "trapped" gusts of wind in post-processing. Maybe it will help someone. We all know that not all wind protection works perfectly. The fluffy stocking worn on my recorder has such disadvantages, and under certain conditions it succumbs to the onslaught of sharp and strong gusts. The method is based on the suppression of low frequencies in the side (difference) component of the stereo signal. Of course, this method cannot be called uncompromising, it has its limitations. But it can be successfully used on "weak" and even "medium" blowouts located below the 200 Hz mark (approximately). Why is it working? Because wind gusts are more often perceived by us as beats in the side component of the stereo signal. I suppress them with a mid/side equalizer. You can use a multiband image, for example. It is important that the filters of the equalizer or imager must be turned on in linear –phase mode. Otherwise, the stereo image will be distorted. I adjust the HP filter with a steepness of 30-36dB / octave in the side channel, and start moving the cutoff frequency until I hear an obvious and sufficient suppression of beats. As a rule, I do not bend above 200 Hz. Most field recordings quite "tolerate" such manipulations, without any significant and noticeable defects for the stereo image. You can also use a dynamic equalizer with mid/side channels (remember the linear-phase mode). Sometimes, with strong but short-term gusts, which can rise in frequency already above 200 Hz, it is possible to locally suppress such a gust in this way by shifting the filter cutoff frequency higher. Since the suppression time is negligible in this case, the loss of stereo image width is unlikely to be noticeable. But the higher the frequency of gusts, and the stronger they are, the more noticeable they are in the middle channel. And this is just the case where the effectiveness of this method ceases. Sometimes, when working with a phonogram, where the noise background is spectrally homogeneous and stable, you can copy neighboring frequency regions to overlay, "cover up" (in whole or in part) strong gusts. I.e., make a substitution. This can be done, for example, in Izotope RX. With due care and patience, no one will understand that such a thing took place. But the wind suppression module in this program is completely not working. He does not cope with his task, contributing only a huge number of artifacts. Although maybe I'm doing something wrong? Share your thoughts, how do you get rid of wind gusts in the recording?