Echo removal?

[Jynks]

So I make a lot of youtube videos and have nvr really had a problem with recording, but I recently pulled up my carpet and put in wooded floors.. looks great but now myu recording has a echoey kind of sound to it, like I am in a much larger room as there is nothing to absorb the sound waves I guess.

Is there a plugin that might be good at helping me clean these recordings a little bit?

[kozikowski]

No. There isn't. You just turned your recording studio into an unusable fashion statement.

I've been known to postpone a recording session because I couldn't get access to the carpeted conference rooms.

All is not lost. Some people at work record in a closet and put quilts and blankets on the walls.

Koz

[Jynks]

I found this page on using some recording app form adobe...

http://www.streaminglearningcenter.com/ ... ition.html

Is there anything like this in Audacity?

[Robert J. H.]

There's a technique called "deconvolution" that can remove some echoes from a room.
It is the opposite of a convolution reverb.
The principle is exact the same. You have to record a loud impuls (shot, balloon, sweep etc.).
Instead of multiplying the spectra of Input signal and impulse response, you gonna divide one by the other.
This should work fine for "known" rooms where everything is recorded in the same way. More sophisticated algrithms are used for cell phones, where the impulse response is hardly known. I don't know if such a plug-in exists yet.
It is of course better to avoid reflections at the recording stage.
Some pals of mine speak into a filled wardrobe when they do an speech acting task.
This method (similar to a phone box) catches the direct sound which passes the microphone. That's the main amount of speech that can slip thru, although other body parts resonate also (especially low frequencies).

[kozikowski]

And remember directional microphones record sound from behind you.

We tried the deconvolution systems and software and never got it better than an experimental curiosity. The problem is the effect is not perfectly reversible. The software generates a limited number of echoes and reverb and does a very good job at it, but it's not all the echoes that are generated by a live room. It's a good approximation, but when faced with a real live room the limited number of echo tools causes problems immediately.

It talks a good story, but just doesn't work very well. You see we both have you working in tiny rooms isolated from your new fashion statement.

Furniture pads work well:

http://www.kozco.com/pictures/boothFini ... op-mic.jpg

I made those wooden frames to hold up the pads against the walls. Note that there are pads on the floor, too. This "recording studio" has many more pictures, but this one and one other are the strongest ones.

Koz

[steve]

Is there anything like this in Audacity?

The short answer: No, Audacity does not have anything like that.

I found this page on using some recording app form adobe...
http://www.streaminglearningcenter.com/ ... ition.html
...
echo_problem.flac

Unfortunately the Audition effect will not help with that audio sample.
The Audition effect works by removing sounds that are off-centre in the stereo mix. That audio sample is 100% centre-panned (2 channel mono) so that Audition effect is unable to make any improvement.

The "deverberation" effect in "Postfish" could probably help but unfortunately development of Postfish was discontinued some years ago. It was only ever available as source-code (http://svn.xiph.org/trunk/postfish/) and probab;y wont build on an up to date machine without a lot of work.

It may also be possible to make some improvement using Melodyne Studio (about $600 - free demo available).

By far the best solution is to avoid unwanted echoes and reverberation in the original recording (which is why recording studios spend so much money on acoustic treatment, and the rest of us have so many rugs and blankets )