floor noise. this may have been asked before, but how do i get rid of background hiss during a voiceover recording? i’m trying to do a podcast and i would like to hear my voice on a background of absolutely nothing. i have windows 11 and latest audacity.
There will ALWAYS be SOME background noise when you record from an acoustic or analog source, but it’s not always audible.
Hiss usually comes from the microphone preamp (usually built-into the interface or into a USB microphone). It’s best if you can minimize the noise by using good equipment and getting a good-strong signal (getting fairly close to the mic and speaking or singing with a strong-confident voice.)
With the right equipment you can usually get the electrical noise down to an acceptable level but then if you don’t have a soundproof studio the microphone picks-up acoustic room noise.
You can use [u]Noise Reduction[/u] but if the noise is bad you can get artifacts/side-effects and “the cure can be worse than the disease”. Noise reduction works best when you have a quiet-constant background noise… It works best when you don’t really need it.
There is also something called a [u]Noise Gate[/u]. A noise gate can kill the sound completely (or reduce it) when it’s below the set threshold so silent parts can be pure digital silence. But again if the noise is bad a noise gate can be distracting or annoying if you can hear the background noise cutting in-and-out.
There is also some noise from the analog playback electronics so you can get noise even when the digital audio is OK.
background hiss during a voiceover recording?
How are you doing the recording? Describe the room, microphone, connection, computer, etc. Pretend I want to build your system here. Is it really “voiceover,” or are you just plain recording your voice?
Many home microphones deliver hissy sound because they record low volume on purpose. Once you boost the voice later to become useful in your show, the background hiss level comes up, too.
When you record your voice, do the blue waves come up to about half-way and does the bouncing sound meter hit about -9dB to -6dB?
Koz