(beginner) Is this distortion fixable to any level?

[yorkieOl]

Hi folks.

I tried to take a video for my friends (musicians), as they cant do it themselves and perform at the same time. the only equipment I had was my mobile phone and unfortunately its mike is quite poor. I am trying to use Audacity to reduce the distortion, but I'm struggling with it. It dont have to be perfect, just listenable. can anyone help guide me with this, or is the audio beyond repair.

Many thanks to all that help..

[Gale Andrews]

I am not an export on "audio repair" but I see in your sample at Analyze > Plot Spectrum that the nasty short bursts of distortion have louder audio at 200 Hz to 400 Hz.

So try Effect > Equalization and reduce the volume of that frequency range on the selections where the distortion is worse. But if you are using Audacity 2.0.3, use the EQ in Draw Curves mode, not the Graphic EQ sliders because the latter have bugs (which are now fixed for when we release 2.0.4).

You will never get that sounding like a commercial recording.

You may also be interested in this link:
http://lifehacker.com/5911955/bootlegmi ... your-phone .


Gale

[yorkieOl]

thanks for your help Gale. I wil keep playing with equalizer. As stated in my last post, I realize it win never be perfect, I just want to make it listenable.

thanks once again..

[Trebor]

... I wil keep playing with equalizer

If you change to the spectrogram view the non-harmonica bits extend across the entire audio spectrum so cannot be reduced with an equalizer.

A limiter would make the amplitude of the waveform constant, but it's not much of an improvement.