It's Audacity... or 2 mikes... or me...

JickBahTech · Post by **JickBahTech** » April 13th, 2006, 9:27 am

Hey just thought i'd chime in real quick.
Audacity's noise removal is pretty brutal, but with a few simple steps, you can get some really good results out of it.
Most important is to get a good clean noise sample. Somewhere in your recording you will need to capture about 3-4 seconds of JUST room noise. If in that sample there are ANY breaths, throat noises, bumps, jostles, etc. than Audacity will try to remove those from the recording, and thats usually were crunchiness happens with noise removal (around the breathing points, voice fading out, and lower voice tones).
Also, since it does hit pretty hard, I wouldn't really recommend using anything but the lowest settings for noise removal. As was stated above, we're not really trying to get to silence (which can actually be very distracting), we're trying to boost the volume of your voice without amplifying any background junk.

The new mic will help a lot, but a little judicial use of noise removal, IMHO, will help a bit too.

--JCB

minime · Post by **minime** » April 14th, 2006, 3:15 am

Thanks again everyone.
I suspect i paid slightly too much for my mike, but if it gives me good quality I will not complain. I had to go to about 5 electronics stores before I found a USB mike.

I have tried absolutely everything with audacity's noise removal - I've had several seconds of just room noise, nothing has helped. Will try the mike tomorrow.

kri · Post by **kri** » April 14th, 2006, 7:51 am

Please keep us posted to know if you got good sound with your mic

minime · Post by **minime** » April 15th, 2006, 2:44 am

I will let you know how I go.
I haven't had time to get into it this weekend, being Easter and all.
Happy easter, everyone.

minime · Post by **minime** » April 21st, 2006, 6:00 pm

Thanks again all - my new mike is going well so far. Sounds good. I just have to work with it well so it doesn't pick up every time I move my head...