First of all, I hope you’re all safe and sound and in good health!
I’m new to this forum and to Audacity, so please forgive my lack of technical understanding and vocabulary… sorry
So I have an audio recording of an interview done on Facebook Messenger, recorded with Screenpresso. Sadly, only my own voice is recorded normally. The interviewee’s voice appears very very weakly and grainy, often making it inaudible. I suspect that Screenpresso recorded the voices as they came through my PC’s loudspeakers instead of recording the sound “inside” my PC (if that makes any sense).
I need to somehow equalize or normalize the volume of both voices, bring them on the same level, and get rid of the grain created by amplifying the low voice. The final audio doesn’t have to be 100% clean, just something that I can hear and transcribe.
I am using Audacity 2.3.3 on Windows 10 x64, and have attached a screenshot of the track.
recorded the voices as they came through my PC’s loudspeakers
Your voice is easy because it’s a service of your computer. The far side voice is a service of the chat or conference program and they don’t like to share.
You didn’t actually get the far-side voice. You got Messenger’s leakage, processing, and echo cancellation errors. No, it’s not a clear voice and there is no recovery.
If your goal is to have it clear enough for transcription and you use conference mode (no headphones), you can sit your phone, microphone up, on the table between you and the computer and record in a voice recorder or sound recorder app. Experiment with this to make sure you get good sound. I use Voice Memo.
Thank you for your quick answer. Is there no way at all to get both voices on the same level, since sometimes my interviewee’s voice is audible, but just very weakly in comparison to mine. I could listen to some parts of it and constantly turn the volume up and down, but I can’t transcribe like this. I’m pretty sure that some parts are still workable, even though I totally trust you if you say that there’s no recovery.
Also, to clarify, the screenshot is that of both my voice and my interviewee’s voice.
Thanks!
If you can’t understand the far side voice no matter what, then that’s the end. If you can get there by jacking the volume control around, then, yes, we may be able to help—a little. I need to drop for a minute.
You can go through the performance word by word, boosting the quiet bits, but we can’t do anything about the parts you can’t understand no matter what, and we can’t do anything about the grainy noise. Most people want the one-button-push solution.
There might be a production note here as well. Even the desperation methods are going to fail if you insist on talking over the guest. Those combination phrases really are permanent trash.
