Kim Janson wrote:On the Judd's video above, the kitchen -5 db sounded pretty ok, -6 db sounded bad, but surprisingly -9db sounded better? The highway - 10 db was pretty much unusable for me, better without.
On these examples it would be really useful to have both, the one with noice assist and without, of the exactly same recording.
The problem with Judd's highway example is that he went for complete suppression of the highway's sound. This is a very good example of the concern that I expressed above about blocking the sound of the recording space (aka room tone/atmo) entirely. The result is completely unnatural, and unusable, to borrow your word, for that reason alone. Since when does someone stand 100yds/90m from a busy highway and the highway is practically silent? I would like to have heard this example with less suppression.
I also think that this was an obvious situation for trying a good lavaliere rather than a "short shotgun"; in other words, a DPA 4060 rather than the DPA 4017 that he used. A 4060 lav plus enough NoiseAssist to reduce, but not suffocate, the sound of the highway would have been a much more informative test. For that matter, a test with a more directional mike (the 4017 is actually a supercardiod) would have been more helpful.*
I think that NoiseAssist is going to be useful for people who record sound in urban areas and can't control drone-like sounds, especially sounds above about 80Hz, in the background.** This often includes air conditioners and building air vents, but I'd like to hear more real life examples.
For example, how effective is NoiseAssist with overhead airplanes, which in many places are a constant problem? Jon Tatooles, in one of Sound Devices's demo recordings, says that there is a plane above, but I want to hear that plane before and after NoiseAssist is applied. Can't blame Tatooles, because it was chance and right now planes aren't exactly in plentiful supply, but that will change. One reason that a plane is a good test is that it tests NoiseAssist's learning ability and speed of learning, which a constantly running air conditioner does not.
All that said, I think so far that this is a serious product, and that for many people it will be more useful, as a practical matter, than 32-bit recording. There are a fair number of comments on the internet from owners of an original MixPre who are talking about this as a reason to upgrade.
Your second paragraph reflects precisely how sound recordists working on higher-end commercial shoots, where the recordist and the sound editor are different people, are going to use NoiseAssist. See the discussion on Wexler's forum about NoiseAssist and Sound Devices's 800 series recorders/mixers.
* The Schoeps CMC641, widely used to record dialogue, is also a supercardiod. I've never heard anyone call it a shotgun mike, short or otherwise.
** Below 80Hz, sometimes below 100Hz, I think that a high pass/low cut filter would be a better choice. For reference, the lowest note on a standard 88 key piano is 27.5Hz and Middle C is 262Hz.