Help with Noise Reduction and Maintaining Vocal Clarity in Audacity

Feedback and Discussion Forum
1

I’m currently working on cleaning up some vocal recordings that were captured in a less-than-ideal environment. I’ve been using the Noise Reduction effect in Audacity, which helps reduce background hum and ambient noise, but I’m finding that it slightly degrades the clarity and warmth of the vocals.
I’d really appreciate any tips or recommended settings that can help balance effective noise reduction while preserving natural vocal tone. Is there a preferred workflow or plugin that works well with Audacity for this kind of task? I’m using the latest version of Audacity on Windows.

Thank you in advance for your guidance looking forward to learning from your experience!

2

Noise reduction works best when you have constant very-low level background noise… When you don’t REALLY need it. :frowning:

There is a new AI Noise Suppression Effect (which I’ve never tried).

…There’s a reason why pros still record in soundproof studios with good equipment and good mic placement, etc. :wink:

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3

Any noise reduction processing will affect the amplitude-frequency response of your signal. Therefore, when recording vocals, use professional equipment in a soundproof studio, as the DVDdoug wrote.

4

You’ll just have to try different settings. Every case is different

Select a short portion of the audio you want to clean up.

Make sure you get a good sample of the constant background noise.

Start with Sensitivity 3 and Smoothing 3.

Try Noise Reduction at 6 and listen to the result. Not enough? Undo and try 9. Up the Noise Reduction by 3 each time until you find the right balance between effective noise reduction and acceptable damage to the vocals. Undo then apply to the entire recording.

Make sure you have an unedited copy of the recording, just in case you later find the Noise Reduction was too much and you need to start over.