I’m fairly new to audio editing and I have been editing Webinar audio to clean up basic audio issues.
I ran across several noises in a recent audio editing session and I started looking into using the Spectogram Wave and the Spectral Editing Tools. But I am having quite a bit of difficulty isolating the noise without messing up the words. I was hoping that forum members with more experience than me might be willing to give me some direction and a few pointers.
If anyone is interested in a challenge and in helping me out, I would really appreciate it. If I’m off base with a question like this, please let me know. Thanks!
It was a new headpiece that the organization was trying out. So it likely was wireless with a battery pack. I wasn’t at the event, but was just provided with the recording.
When you look at the spectrogram below , it looks like whatever the issue was that it covered the whole spectrum. The sound problems on the image below are at the time in the audio where the heavier red/pink extend down to the bottom of the spectrum - and you can see the sound levels extending up to the top of the spectrum along the same lines as well.
My assumption is that the good part of the voice might be in the mid-range of the spectrum along that distortion? Does that make sense? But I’m not sure that the Spectral Effect Tools can deal with that easily. However, right about now I do have a lot of Corona time on my hands - so maybe I’ll keep tinkering with different spectrogram settings and effects.
So you’ll notify them what happened, right? That the performance is basically trash?
I’m going with off-band myself (given the batteries were OK). That’s not interference in the sense of computer fan noise or refrigerator compressor getting into the show. Those are a piffle compared to this. The channel is switching rapidly between “the show” and white noise depending on volume. White noise covers all tones.
Since you have infinite time, try this. Carefully copy-paste many distorted peaks into one sound track. If you play that track, it will be complete crashy garbage. There should be no voice. Effect > Noise Reduction > Profile that track. That will give Noise Reduction a goal or something to remove from the performance. Select the whole show and Effect > Noise Reduction > OK. Change the settings and see what happens.
Noise Reduction of the Beast (6, 6, 6) may be a good starting point. Those are the settings for gentle noise removal in audiobooks. You can go in jumps up to 12, 6, 6 where it starts to damage the voice.
Those are not the settings recommended in the Noise Reduction instructions. Experiment.
Yes, they knew it was bad and did let me know ahead of time. They said they figured out what it was at their end so, hopefully it’s a one time issue.
Thanks for the unique way to deal with the noise - I will definitely try piecing together the distortions I can find and use the Noise Reduction - very clever - I appreciate it!
