How to remove matching audio between 2 clips?

Audacity Help Forum
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So recently I recorded a video in OBS and I had an issue with my microphone track, where it blended the game audio track inside, and I’m not sure how to fix it, I tried using the “Isolate vocals” effect, but it’s really, really bad.

image

The game audio track is perfectly isolated, so I figured I can maybe use that track as a mask to remove the matching audio on my mic track, and be left with mostly just my own voice, even if it has some artifacts (maybe I could even run the isolate vocals effect after), I just, have no idea how.

I found this thread when looking for info, and it mentions something similar to mine, and while their proposal is seemingly not possible, someone mentions that A-B (which is what I’m trying to do, Mic/Game blend - Game audio) is possible, I just don’t really understand Audacity too too much to figure it out on my own.

In case it matters, both audio files are .wav.

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Well both the audacity forums and this discord proved to be incredibly unhelpful throughout the past week, which is disappointing, on better news, I fixed the issue.

Had to do a bunch of research, but it was rather simple in the end, it’s a method called Phase Cancellation. All you have to do is place the audio you want to use as a mask on a second track, and use an effect call Invert on it, it’s really that simple.

Bear in mind, sometimes the audio might not cancel out, this is because it might be out of sync, make sure to sync up your audio first, I had to trim out the first 266 samples of my game audio to successfully cancel out the matching audio.

I just applied the Isolate Vocals effect afterwards and the small artifacts from the Phase Cancellation are almost gone (you may also have to use the amplify effect to recover some lost volume, the effect audo-adjusts for the best settings), and they’re going to be completely masked by the regular game audio playing on the video. Alternatively, if you get too many artifacts, you may run a Noise Reduction (not Noise Gate) effect, just use the dead space as the profile and fiddle with the values, it helped fix the issue with my second mic clip.

Hopefully this helps someone in the future which might stumble into the same issue.

These are the values I used on the Vocals Isolation effect as well:
image

Before and after in the next posts because I don’t have multi-embed privileges.

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Before:

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After:

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Hi there
To minimize game audio bleed in your microphone track recorded in OBS:

  1. Use Audacity.
  2. Identify game audio peaks.
  3. Invert these peaks to create an “anti-noise” mask.
  4. Overlay this mask onto the microphone track to cancel out game audio.
  5. Fine-tune the overlay to minimize bleed while preserving your voice.
  6. Export the edited microphone track without interfering game audio. Alight Motion Mod APK is another good choice which also give audio editing option.