Hi, I am Chris, I am new to the forum. And I am already familiar with Audacity for basic functionalities.
I have a recurrent problem: how to remove all sounds that can hurt the ears from an interview recording?
I always have some hurting sounds, because the recorder/chair was moved, the table was hit, etc…
I would like to safely listen to my recording without worrying about a high sound that irritated the ears 
What should I do in Audacity to prevent this ?
Thanks in advance
I always have some hurting sounds, because the recorder/chair was moved, the table was hit, etc…
I would like to safely listen to my recording without worrying about a high sound that irritated the ears
It’s going to be pretty-much impossible to filter-out those shoulds without affecting the voices.
The human voice contains many simultanous frequencies, as do the noises, and the frequencies overlap.
Of course, in-between speaking you can mute the sound.
High-pass filtering (say, around 200Hz) can filter-out low-frequency noises without much affect on inteligability. If you have very-high frequency noises you can also try a low-pass filter somewhere around 6000Hz.
For something like a squeek, you can try a notch filter. Select the part with the squeek, then Analyze → Plot Spectrum and maybe you can see the frequency that needs to be filtered-out. It won’t be perfect, but it might help.
If the noise is louder than the speaking, compression may help a little. (Compression tends to make quiet parts louder and/or loud parts quieter.)
I have a recurrent problem: how to remove all sounds that can hurt the ears from an interview recording?
The solution is mainly better microphone placement. Maybe lapel mics.
Interviews are rarely perfect because you are usually interviewing amateurs in an imperfect environment.
If you watch the TV news, you will see reporters on the street getting the directional mic within a few inches of the speaker’s mouth. Some environemental noise gets through, but most of the time the results are acceptable. Sometines there is a barking dog, or a siren, etc., and it’s distracting, and sometimes they have to pause the interview.
In the TV studio, lapel mics are the standard. Sometimes a guest will touch the mic or touch their chest so that the mic makes a distracting sound, but the reporters know not to do that.
Hi,
thank you for your reply. I understand human voice is not an easy task. I have applied the high pass and the low pass on 200Hz and 6000Hz as suggested. I still have these hurting noise for the ear. What hurts is the fact that it is much more loud than the rest, how would it be possible to arrange that by lowering it?
Improving the mic position is also I have to consider.
Chris
how would it be possible to arrange that by lowering it?
To lower it you have to separate it from the interview and you can’t separate the parts of a mixed recording. The people trying to record a rock concert want us to filter out the guy clapping next to them. We can’t do that, either.
What are the conditions of the interview? Walking down the street? Sitting at a desk? Your desk? What kind of microphone do you have? Even a poor microphone should have made the voice louder than the table noises. You’re doing something wrong.
Recording a voice well under studio conditions is rough to do, recording it in the field takes a master class.
Koz
Hi,
I can hear the voice fine, the recording is ok. It is just that when I hear the recording there are some very short loud noise that comes out very high compared to the rest of the recording.
These very short high noises are irritating when doing interview re-transcription. So I was wondering if I could make something to reduce this as these very short high noises looks different from the voice.
Chris
We may be talking cross-purposes. Select about a second of sound with one of the noises in the middle. Export it as WAV and post it on the forum.
https://forum.audacityteam.org/t/how-to-post-an-audio-sample/29851/1
Koz
Hi,
thanks to your experienced feedback, I have realized that I couldn’t do anything interesting with my recording. It was not good enough to be able to improve it, so I am going to get a lapel mic, the SmartLav.
Chris
I moved your post to your original topic. I have no idea why you posted it in a topic about converting a movie file to an audio file.
Gale