No worries Bob. The latest one I provided to the customer and am awaiting feedback on uses the peak envelope detectors and the slew volume controls (as they originally didn`t like) with the slew rate on the volume controls slowed down so the switching isn`t as audibly noticable (which is what you just mentioned). The problem I had with the Running Average Envelope method was instruction count, so I couldn`t really use it given the other items required in the project. In the short term, when I spun the PCB design, I had little choice but to add 2 EEPROM`s so that I could offer the noise reduction stuff in one (with the high instruction count) and all my other features in the other. I`m hoping if this ever gets to the point of being a standard library function, that all of this could eventually fit below the 1024 instruction count and I could fall back to a single EEPROM.
To answer your other question, the customer characterized the listen audio as though they where `listening to someone in a tunnel.` They also didn`t like the sound of the gates switching in and out. Slowing down the slew rate on the volume controls addressed the later, but I haven`t done anything to address the former. If I can get more bins added back in, I`m hopeful that will start to address it.