Audacity Forum

I accidentally put an echo on a spoken voice track (I was working under less than ideal hearing conditions and didn't realize just how MUCH of an echo I had done) - how can I take it off? I don't want to have to re-record the entire thing.

Thanx!
--J

If you have applied the effect to a specific track, saved the project and closed Audacity, then sorry to say that you probably can't. While the Audacity project is open, you can use "undo", but if Audacity has been closed this option will not be available.

For future reference, it is usually better to apply effects to a copy of the track. With most effects you will want a wet/dry mix (wet=effect, dry=original signal), so by having a "wet" track and a separate "dry" track, you can adjust the amount of effect and original by adjusting the volume sliders for each track.

I guess what I'm hoping for is a way to tone it down - I'm thinking, like if you change the pitch, you can later change it back by applying a negative pitch, or if you change the speed, you can later change it in the other direction. Is there "an opposite direction" for an echo?

The short answer - "no"

The longer answer;
You may be able to remove the "trailing" echoes using a "Gate" effect. The "trailing echoes" are echoes that you hear after the vocal has stopped. I don't know of anything that will reduce the echo effect during the vocal phrase.

Oh, good - that's actually probably close to what I wanted int he first place - I'll go look for "gate".

The gate is probably not what you're looking for, actually. All that will do is remove a signal once it reaches below a certain threshold.

It's almost impossible to remove an echo from an audio clip. It may be possible to make several copies of the original file and invert and time shift them to get them to cancel out. But if all you have is a single copy with the echo included then you're stuck.

alatham wrote:The gate is probably not what you're looking for, actually. All that will do is remove a signal once it reaches below a certain threshold.

Unless he actually wants a "gated echo" effect.

alatham wrote:It's almost impossible to remove an echo from an audio clip.

True

alatham wrote: It may be possible to make several copies of the original file and invert and time shift them to get them to cancel out. But if all you have is a single copy with the echo included then you're stuck.

If he has the original recording (without echo) then it would be easier to just delete the track which has too much echo.

Thanx - I will be MUCH more careful with echoes in the future. This one is okay, since once I added the music and submarine noises, the echo was only occasionally noticeable, and actually sounds really cool...

--Julie