Too much noise removal.
Noise removal is always a compromise between reducing the noise and how much damage is acceptable. The “quacking” is because you have tried to completely “remove” the noise. In reality, the best that you can hope for is to “reduce” the noise.
Try setting the “Noise Reduction (dB)” setting to 14, and the “Frequency smoothing” to 250. That should reduce the hiss quite a lot without damaging the speech sound too much.
“Popping sounds” are a different issue. If that is still a problem we can look at that next, but the “quacking” is what sounds “bad” to me.
Sorry but to set the noise reduction db to 14 should i use the entire track as a noise profile? I’m quite hesitant to ruin it again.
And you’re definitely right about the noise removal. I did it too many times without knowing it ruined the track. I guess thats the importance of recording it correctly the first time.
The Profile you select is the work that you want removed from your show. If you select your voice, Noise Removal will try to remove your voice from the show. Pick a portion of the show that only has noise and nothing else. Many people create a Noise Profile during their performance by sitting in front of the microphone quietly and not breathing for three or four seconds. That quiet segment is then drag-selected for the Noise Reduction Profile.
The top setting, Noise Reduction may be too high. I drag-select a small portion of the show and apply the noise removal and then listen to the change when I play over the boundary. Yes, singing into a wine glass and dead silence between words is not normal.
Start with something gentle like 9dB or 12dB.
Please note that no matter what you do, you will not be able to remove dogs barking or TVs in the next room. Those are show killers.
Make a copy of your show and save it somewhere safe. That’s the Shoot or Studio Master. A common mistake is using one filename through the whole studio and post production process. Just keep recording corrections on top of the old work. You should avoid that. If you make a mistake anywhere in the process, you’ll be singing the song again. All your work until that point is trash.
Many performers periodically save their work with time and date burned in. 2014-10-15-1205.wav. That’s now in California. Do not put slash marks or colons into filenames. Use the ISO version.