Audacity Forum

I have a recording of a quiet song that I'm trying to get rid of a baby crying in.

It's a slow, quiet Symphonic Band song from a concert I was recently part of. It's a great recording, but the thing is, during a saxophone solo at the end, a baby in the audience made a sound. Not to be rude or anything, but it ruined the recording. I was wondering if Audacity has any tools that I can remove this with. I tried the "Noise Removal" on it and it worked, only thing is, it took away the music and gave me only the baby. Is there any way I can tell it to do the opposite?

etgohomeok wrote:I tried the "Noise Removal" on it and it worked, only thing is, it took away the music and gave me only the baby.

The "Noise Removal" effect will not completely remove the sound of the baby, but you will probably be able to reduce it to some degree.

The way that "Noise Removal" works, is to take a sample of the unwanted noise - this is the "Noise Profile". The second step is the "Noise Reduction" step in which any sound that matches the profile is reduced.

Typically Noise Removal is used for reducing "tape hiss", or background "hums". In your case you need to create the "Noise Profile" from just the sound of the baby crying. Unfortunately you probably do not have a recording of just the baby crying, and if you use a profile from the "baby + band", then the noise reduction step will reduce both the baby and the band.

If you have managed to (partially) isolate the sound of the baby (you may be able to isolate the sound of the baby further by using the"Equalization" effect), then you can use that to create the Noise Profile, and then apply it to that region of the original recording.

There are many factors that will affect how effectively this works, so you will just have to experiment a bit to see how good you can get it. (Make sure you keep a backup copy of the recording).