So I’m somewhat new to audacity. I already know how to use the basic noise removal by grabbing a ‘silent’ portion of a file and then using that profile for the enrie track to reduce noise.
In one file though, there;s this constant ticking noise, I think from me hitting my keyboard. I’m trying to find a way to remove that in between when I’m talking. However, I don’t see a solution. Noise reduction isn’t doing the job with it no matter how I try.
I’ve updated the topic title to better describe the problem.
No, Noise Reduction will not be effective for dealing with a ticking noise. Noise Reduction works on constant noise such as hiss and hum.
Tick sounds are difficult to deal with, If you look in the spectrogram view (http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/spectrogram_view.html) you will probably see a vertical line where the tick occurs. Because it covers a broad range of frequencies, you can’t “filter” it out.
If it is a very short click, you may be able to repair it with the “Repair” effect: http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/repair.html
If the damage is longer, you may be able to remove each tick by carefully cutting it out. This is easier to do if the click occurs during a silence. It requires zooming in very close (http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/zooming.html) so that you can select just the click, and then delete it. You may need to use the Repair effect to smooth the edit boundaries.
By far the best approach is to record in a quiet room and don’t make noises while your record 
The noise isn’t there long enough to make a good profile. If you were obsessive enough, you could find and copy a bunch of clicks into one track and use that for the profile. You could duplicate one click a bunch of times, drag-select the whole bunch and make the profile.
That seems crazy, but it’s opposed to the other way which is to manually find each click, select it and paste Room Tone (normal background noise) over it. You can’t just silence it with Control-L because that will leave a little hole in the performance. You could delete each one if you’re not concerned about absolute show length or none of them appear over your voice.
Some of the Vinyl tools might be valuable (clicks and pops).
http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/tutorial_click_and_pop_removal_techniques.html
Koz
manually doing isn’t too out of the question. I’m working on commentary so I can remove noise in between when I’m talking. But boy this is taking forever. I’ll try the other method suggested and see how that works.
Unfortunately that would not work very well. Even though you would then have a noise profile that matches the sound that you want to remove, because it is relatively high level and has a broad frequency range, the Noise Reduction would do a lot of damage to the audio that you want to keep.
(Your other tip about pasting “room tone” can be very effective, though time consuming.)
I just wish there was a way to remove all noise in between when I’m talking
For the “spaces” between, there is a plug-in on the forum that can make pasting “room tone” much easier and quicker. I’ll need to go look for it …
That sounds wonderful!
found it: https://forum.audacityteam.org/t/punch-copy-paste/28906/1
Installation instructions: http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Download_Nyquist_Plug-ins#install
Tip: For the “copy”, find a good bit of “room tone” that is about the length of the longest “silence” that you want to paste. This copied room tone should be as even as possible with no distinguishing sounds in it.
Tip 2: Read the instructions
Fantastic, I’ll try it and keep you posted
If it isn’t obvious by now, make the show come out right as you’re doing it is a Really Big Deal. There’s a universal rule that post production editing takes five times the length of the show. It can get worse, but the first time you decide to “clean it up just a little bit,” you’re dead. So if this is an hour presentation, you could be there for a business day.
Koz
Well yes ideally it would be wonderful for everything to come out perfectly the first time anything is done, not sure why that has to be said.
In any case, the plug in is very nice. It doesn’t do exactly what I’m looking for, but perhaps what I’m asking for isn’t really possible. I don’t know if audacity is meant to target every moment in between talking and kill noise.
not sure why that has to be said.
Too many people record in their live, noisy living room or don’t take care at the recording step based on being able to “clean it up” later in Audacity. Most times, no.
perhaps what I’m asking for isn’t really possible.
Suppressing vinyl clicks and pops is so popular people wrote very good, paid software to deal with it. You never said so, but you’re doing gamer recording, right? That’s a much smaller group. Still, If you can hear other people’s recordings without the keyboard clicks, I wonder how they did it.
Other than special, close-talking microphones and typing under a towel, there’s not a lot you can do.
I wonder if there’s a gamer keyboard. That would make sense. There was one PC, third-party keyboard that had very stiff keys and made no noise. It’s been a while, but that would be good.
Koz