Audacity Forum

HELP!!! I am a voice talent recording professional voiceovers from my home and have been using Audacity for a couple years. Every time I open it up it has a new issue. Most recently, and the most frustrating one that I cannot solve is this.
I record a voiceover.
I go to take out background noise.
The noise that is left as a result of "removing" the noise is a strange, faint squiggly kind of sound. Not only is it during the "silent" breaks, it's under my voice! This is terrible and so frustrating and I have tried to uninstall, reinstall, and use two different computers with two different versions of Audacity. HELP me please if you can!!

Moderator Note: There's no need to shout with oversized, lurid-coloured text.
Unnecessary formatting removed for readability, to give our old eyes a rest ...

Yes. That's what Audacity 1.2 noise reduction sounds like. That particular error, bubbly, gargly, honky, is overcorrection. You may be able to help a bit by reducing the correction level or selecting a different noise profile.

Just to cover the bases: you select a noise profile -- a sample of the the evil noise by itself -- and the software will try to subtract that noise from the show. It's not a 'switch it all on and go home' thing. It's a violin and needs to be tuned for good operation and it's easy, particularly in Audacity 1.2, to get it wrong.

I noticed significant room echo in the sample. I don't know any software that will get rid of that. The best you can do is suppress air conditioner whine or rush sound or maybe some microphone hum. It will not get rid of apartment sounds and there is quite of a list of permanent problems.

Our bad joke is that MetroBus outside your window or the dog down the hall are now performers in your show. No software will get rid of that.

It bothers us when somebody goes into a job knowing they're going to create damage and require the rescue tools later. If anything at all goes wrong, there is no show -- you have no place to go.


The tool was never very good, clean, or stable and it's one of the reasons I switched to Audacity 1.3.12. The noise reduction tools in 1.3.12 are, in my opinion, vastly better, even though more complicated, than 1.2, but they're still no home run. There is a spirited discussion on a different part of the forum about changing Noise Reduction to a better software package. Again, much, much better to not have the noise in the first place. I have artists who line a coat closet with quilts so to have a quiet place to record.

I have a very quiet conference room in the company that I use when nobody else needs it.

http://audacityteam.org/download/

Koz

Publish a sample like that, but clean. No processing or other software assistance

Koz