Dear Audacity:
Being a transcriptionist, more often times than not, organizations that record information
that later request this information to be transcribed by a transcriptionist into document
format, do not take the time to do a clean recording and many times use 1 microphone
placed either too far away or not close at all making the speaker sound like he is speaking
from the back of the room.
Is there any way, using Audacity, that the placement of people speaking that sound far away
can be brought “to the front” and eliminate all of the room acoustics so you can hear the
their voices clearer and dry so as to understand it better and have less trouble transcribing it?
Is there any way, using Audacity, that the placement of people speaking that sound far away
can be brought “to the front” and eliminate all of the room acoustics so you can hear the
their voices clearer and dry so as to understand it better and have less trouble transcribing it?
Not in Audacity or most other software programs.
Most recording producers would kill to be able to do that.
Sometimes you can get a very slight improvement by applying Effect > Equalization: Telephone, Length about 5000.
There was a really odd thing you could do with noise reduction. Select the whole show by clicking just right of the up arrow. Effect > Noise Reduction > Profile.
Then Effect > Noise Reduction: 6, 6, 6 > OK.
Then Effect > Amplify > OK.
The noise reduction tool is not totally linear and sometimes it can be made to clear up a little of the echo.
I designed the audience reaction and review microphone system for a theater. I insisted on high quality stereo recording. Many of the production people wanted crappy mono or compressed audio. It was possible to listen to three different conversations at once—accurately—with good headphones after everybody went home just by having them separated left to right.
Koz