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I met today a good guy, an artist D. McDade here, to whom I showed a song and explained about reverberation and noise -problems in small-room -recordings. He mentioned some tools such as German -tools, suggested them being high-quality options, and some Pro-Tools, apparently here. I currently use iPad's GarageBand, Audacity -- but problems with filtering noise. My songs miss the vocal parts and riffs, a lot of white-noise-style -things with them -- hard to fit them to other parts being of much higher -quality and clarity. My game-dev-comrade uses ZoomUH34n -microphone in development, you can apparently get very high-quality sound with it (costing some 300EUR). I am not sure what I really need here, I use iPad's microphone for recording and I like that I can do work anywhere I am so not wanting carry any big items.

Does there exist some hobbyist -tools or better filters to get out things such as noises and echos? What are the options for hobbyist audio-recording?

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It sounds a bit like you're trying to add your own recordings to existing sounds. Where are you getting those sounds from? What kind of context are you working in? – Warrior Bob♦ Aug 6 '12 at 22:22
@WarriorBob I get the high-quality site from GaregeBand to which I want to add audio -recording. – hhh Aug 7 '12 at 7:14

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Generally, filtering out noise and echoes is best done at recording time, by using an appropriate microphone and recording space. Removing noise and echoes after they are "baked in" to the recording is an approximation at best, especially when the noise and echo frequencies are in the same range as the desired signal. I am not aware of any tools that perform this automatically that I have liked enough to use in leiu of just making a better recording in the first place.

The free wave editor Audacity has a basic noise-removal algorithm as well as an equalizer plugin which alters the volume of specific frequency ranges. I have not had much luck with their noise removal, but sometimes the noise is mainly in a range you do not care about and you can cut it with the equalizer.

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"If you use the VST enabler, you can use any VST plug-in with Audacity. The Kjaerhus EQ is a really good free one (if you don't need more than 7 bands). In fact all their plug-ins are good...", source here. Reference to the noise-remeval algorithm or some suggestion highly appreciated. – hhh Aug 11 '12 at 21:26

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