Remove cell phone interferrence from recording

I’m a new user of Audacity. This seems like a great tool. Props to the people that made it. I recently recorded a family event for a friend. When we played it back, we noticed several times when a cell phone had been too close and the “dit dah dit dddddddd dit dah dit” sounds were very noticable. Is there a way to remove only those sounds? (I tried Click Removal, but they’re apparently not regular enough for that. I am not sure how to isolate the sounds to use them with Noise Removal.)

Any help would be appreciated.

I don’t think there is much that you can do about that kind of interference.

You could try Brian Davies’ excellent ClickRepair software - it costs $40 - but you get a 21day free trial - See http://wwwmaths.anu.edu.au/~briand/sound/software_download/clickrepair_info.html

But I suspect that ClicRepair may not work on this sort of “noise” - worth an experimental try though.

Failing that you can attempt some laborious maual repairs. You will need to identify where in the waveforms the “noise” occurs - zooming in will help. You can then do one of the following:

  1. select and delete the “noise” - you ill need to ensure that you cut at what are known as “zero crossings” or you will just generate yet another click
  2. use the redraw tool to manually repair the waveform (in 1.3 there is a Repair effect which can do this, but only for up to 128 samples - and I suspect your “noises” will be longer than that, but maybe not - have a try)
  3. You could try identifying the “noise” and replacing it with a same length sample copied from a neighbouring bit of good sound. This is probably the trickiest to do - but woth a try if you are feeling up to it.

Good luck - and let us know how you get on,

WC

A slightly sloppier way is to zoom into the pips, select them and Edit > Silence. The holes are a lot less noticeable than those pips.

Koz

Thanks Koz and WC. You’ve given me a place to start. I’ll try your suggestions and post the results.
-Wes