Two questions, one post: Removing mechanical keyboard typing / How to search in these forums?

Audacity 3 Help Forum Windows
1

As it says in the subject, I’ve got two questions, and the second question stems from the first.

Question #1: I am using Audacity 3.2.3 to edit a data collection conversation to being just the audio from the participant so that I can run it through Dragon to do some auto-transcription. Due to the limitations in my recording setup, everything got recorded through one microphone, including the clacking from my mechanical keyboard as I took notes during the conversation (I have carpal tunnel). What would I use in Audacity to decrease the sound of the mechanical keyboard typing and retain the quality of the speaker’s voice.

Question #2: While I was searching for a solution within this forum, my keyword searches (“mechanical”, “keyboard”, “remove”, “typing”) came up with results, but whenever I clicked on the title of a forum post, it said something about the post not existing within the time frame. One of the topics was from 2015, so I understood why that might not be there. But the other was from a thread from 2022. What’s causing this problem? Did I do something wrong?

2

Keyboard clacking is very difficult to remove: it cuts across a wide frequency-range.
AI may be worth a try to isolate speech, see … Enhance Speech from Adobe | Free AI filter for cleaning up spoken audio (free, for now).

3

Thanks for the recommendation and the information about keyboard typing being difficult to remove from recordings. I’ll keep that in mind for my future interviews.

Since this is for a Master’s research project, I do not want to use cloud-based services to transcribe my participant interviews. Do you know if there any non-cloud based or locally-hosted products that work like this?

4

This voice recognition and cleaning thing is very Artificial Intelligence Cutting Edge Stuff. It’s hard to get right.

You could try what Hollywood does when it stumbles into a problem like this. Get the performer to repeat the work in more favorable conditions (quiet studio) or, if you’re really in a hole, hire an actor with a similar voice to read your transcribed paper notes in more favorable conditions.

If you do find an independent software product that works, post back.

You hit number four.

Screen Shot 2023-02-22 at 10.52.47 AM.png
The practicing obsessive will tell you to double record any important performances. This can be using your prepared recorder as well as having your phone record the same thing on the table.

This was a radio broadcast (recording) I did. Audacity on the left was the main recording and that Rode thing on the right was the backup recorder.

Koz

5

Yes, but a LOT of computing grunt is required: the video (GPU) is press-ganged into processing audio in real-time … https://youtu.be/Q-mETIjcIV0?t=505

6

How long is the performance? How long will it be when you get done editing?

Koz

7

It was originally one hour, and after doing a lot of editing, it’s now down to 30-ish minutes.

Thanks for all the responses, they’ve been helpful. I did an in-person focus group yesterday and I used a less-noisy keyboard to take my notes.

Does anyone have insights into the second question of my post? Or should I ask about this in the Maintaining/Improving the Forum forum?

8

I’m guessing that you were using the “advanced search” options.

In many cases, Google is better for searching the forum. As your search terms, use:

site://forum.audacityteam.org

followed by the terms that you are looking for.

Example, searching for “mechanical keyboard”

If you wish to discuss searching the forum further, please start a new topic.

9

Got it, thanks, steve. You can close this topic now.