Is the following of minimizing a sound feature supported?

Hello,

I have an audio tape where one person is speaking and there is some sort of a blender running making some noise at the same time. Now I am a novice and do not know the technical term but I would like to edit the audio such that the blender noise is completely faded out so I can just hear the person talking.

Is this something that audacity can accomplish? If so , could you please point me to the feature/tutorial that covers that?

Thanks in advance,
Bobby.

What you want is called “Noise Removal” or “Noise Reduction”. However these only work when the noise is significantly lower than the signal (blender quieter than the person talking), or the noise is in a different frequency band from the signal (blender noise is lower or higher frequency than the person talking). If what you have is a recording where you can’t tell what the person is saying because of the blender noise (because it is as loud as or louder than the voice, and/or is in the same frequency range as the voice) then you’re probably out of luck.
You could post a short sample here on the forum (use MP3 - with WAV you are restricted to about 6 seconds of audio), and we’ll be better able to tell you if there is any hope.
– Bill

Thank you for the tip. Unfortunately , the blender noise is almost as loud as the person talking. Due to some confidentiality I cannot post this audio clip on this forum, but I can experiment with the noise reduction feature of audacity to see if I can do anything which yield to some improvements.

Thanks
Bobby

Another option is to examine the frequency spectrum of the recording using Analyse > Plot Spectrum. Set the size to 4096 and the axis to Log Frequency. It is possible that the blender sound has peaks at specific frequencies. Move the cursor over the spectrum plot to identify the frequencies of the peaks, then use Effect > Notch Filter to take out each of the peaks as you identify them.
– Bill