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Well - I've had the experience AGAIN where the dialogue (exteriors) had 'noise'. I use EQ as well as X-Noise/X-Hum etc... Problem is - I find I end up in that weird balancing place of 'robotic audio' and 'still hear noise'.

Client is desperately trying to push me to 'make it sound perfect'. Is there anything I can do? I'm tempted to take it to a Cambridge unit or Cedar....

Any thoughts?

You might check out the izotope RX plug-in.

Several years ago I had a really bad dialog track with tons of wind noise (not recorded by me), that I was asked to fix. I tried with DINR, EQ, etc. to no avail (actually maybe about a 15% improvement). Sparing no expense, I sent it to someone who had all the Cedar stuff and specialized in that type of stuff, but had no luck.

The moral of the story is, sometimes there is just no fixing poorly recorded (or unavoidable problems in) audio. So either get it right in the recording, or go to ADR.

tell the client to record it better then....lol

seriously, it's usually hard when you have such crappy audio to being with. And it's hard to suggest anything without hearing it...maybe post a clip? I can try throwing it in my Izotope or Wave Arts plugs.
You just have to balance between added artifacts and noise. You might have better luck with other noise reduction programs/units.

or ADR?

Yeah - eventually decided to go with ADR.... With these indie movies - they have no budgets... want so much good sound for no money and it's tough to keep working the audio and working it over and over and over. I think I just need to learn to tell clients the audio isn't 'fixable' and also when it's time to be done 'tweaking'.

Thanks for the input guys. I appreciate it.

wes