Audacity Forum

I am editing a live recording of Faure's Requiem, and it is excellent save for one moment during the baritone solo where someone in the audience drops a book on the floor. It is very loud and startling, for a fraction of a second. Nothing I do seems to edit it out; I've tried the hard limiter and the click removal. Perhaps my settings aren't correct. Any advice on how to at least lessen this disturbance? I can't get a noise profile by itself, obviously. (Portland, Oregon)

It will not be possible to completely repair the damage, but there are a couple of ways that you may be able to make it less noticeable.

1) Zoom in close on the place where the bang is. Select the bang as closely as you can and delete it.

2) Try the PopMute plug-in (version 0.2) from here: http://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic ... 42&t=50671 (this plug-in may not work with Audacity 1.2.6, but I would highly recommend upgrading to Audacity 1.3.13 anyway. http://audacityteam.org/download/ )

Instructions for installing Nyquist plug-ins: http://audacityteam.org/download/plugins

Thanks a lot! I never thought of just editing out the offending fraction of a second. I did edit out exactly .4 seconds, then slowed down the tempo over the splice by about 35%, since the cut made the accompaniment sound rushed over an 8th note.

Unfortunately some of the reverb from the noise still remains, but it's MUCH better. (Editing out the entire sound left WAY too much of an obvious splice.) I must add that this was very hard to do without leaving 'artifacts', but after multiple attempts it sounds smooth.

I'll try your second suggestion as well when I have more time! Thanks again. If anyone else has suggestions, they're still welcome.

A slightly more sophisticated method of repair is to "patch" the damaged area.
To do this you need to find another part of the recording that is as similar as possible to the damaged section, then copy it and paste it to a new track:
Silence the damaged area of the original track (Ctrl+L) and apply Fade In / Fade Out effects to cross-fade from the original, to the patch, then back to the original.