Having just completed work on Keanu Reeves' latest film, ‘Constantine', sound designer and editor Charles Maynes talks to Sony about his use of the Oxford Restoration Tools.

”Being a sound designer, I record all sorts of sounds to make scenes work, but more often than not, in fairly uncontrolled environments. As a result, I end up with recordings with somewhat undesirable noise in the background, such as air conditioning or even traffic. The Oxford DeNoise plug-in is very helpful in taming some of these hindrances whilst leaving the usable sound for me to further enhance. It is especially useful in situations where the offending noise modulates, which the DeNoiser is nicely able to track and respond to without having to do separate DeNoising passes for each changing moment. To my knowledge, the Oxford DeNoiser is the only processor of this type that does dynamically track the noise signature. Most of the others rely on a ‘fingerprint' of the noise to be taken, and then a fixed filter is built for it. Another fantastically useful thing I call on the plug-in for is removing transfer artefacts which can sometimes occur with digital transfers.

The DeClick plug-in does a wonderful job of removing the clicks and smoothing the recording - in many instances, to a degree that sounds as if the original problems were not there at all ! Yet another great use of the DeClick, is removing sharp transients from recordings like rain on hard surfaces. It allows for a very controlled and creative removal of the sharpest transients without disrupting the general ‘bed' of the sound.

The DeBuzz plug-in is very useful when dealing with less than ideal recordings, where lighting or video monitor noise may be present. In many cases, when ADR or foley are recorded, there will be a very slight whine which is generated by glass picture tube displays. This whine is similar to a ground hum, but at a much higher frequency which makes it no less annoying. The DeBuzz plug-in can handily minimize this whine, as well as mains hum at 50 or 60Hz. Being able to deal with this in a more automatic manner can be a fantastic timesaver. Such artefacts could be dealt with using EQ, but this is not as quick since the DeBuzzer has a great deal of flexibility in handing any frequency fluctuations. This is especially useful if such a sound is pitch shifted as those harmonics slide down into a much more bothersome frequency range where more substantial processing of the wanted sound might be required.

The Oxford Restoration Tools has certainly allowed me to work faster, and has provided me with some very useful and creative tools for my craft.

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