Removing or reduceing the sound of a perkins Brailler

Hi all,
I was wondering if there was any plugins to either reduce the attached sound which is acctually a perkins Brailler that my students use but it doesn’t sound nice in the recording would noise reduction work for this?
Please see below. I would like to thank you all for teaching me so much on the use of Audacity, as due to the fact I have no sight I rely on audio a lot.
the links are:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/quqmhc02zal79de/Remote%20Braille%20group%2013th%20sept.mp3?dl=1
https://www.dropbox.com/s/59n5qiem9o52d6w/brailller%20sound.aup3?dl=1

It sounds very like an old-fashioned mechanical typewriter …

Audacity’s Noise-Reduction will be of no use as the unwanted sound is essentially bursts of white-noise: which contains all frequencies equally.
Audcaity’s Noise-Reduction depends on the unwanted noise having a non-uniform frequency-content, (& different to the wanted signal).

The only way I can think to reduce that mechanical sound is to split the audio into harmonic & inharmonic content,
as the unwanted sound is entirely inharmonic noise. But, all the software I’ve seen that’s capable of doing that split costs hundreds of dollars.

Hi ChantalHampson1

I have listened to your mp3 file, and noted that is in mono (one track only).

The content sounds like a tutor - student tutorial.

Could a stereo recording be done in future, with the tutor on the left channel and the student on the right. This would facilitate easier editing.

This technique is as old as the hills and was called Sound with Sound and was found on many reel-to-reel tape recorders.

The Audacity file is a two second burst of noise. I’m not entirely sure where it came from.

Please return to this forum as many times as you wish, as I am sure we can be of help.

The “Noise Reduction” effect will not help.
Audacity does not yet have the ability to deal with that kind of noise, and I’m not aware of any reasonably priced, user friendly software that can help.

There is currently some development work to add an AI effect to Audacity for separating different kinds of sound. I believe that this work is scheduled to appear for the first time in Audacity 3.1.0, though I don’t yet know when that will be released, and I don’t know how effective the first version will be - it is ongoing development work.

I don’t know if this will be of any help, but the PDF manual for the Mountbatten Brailler includes tips to reduce the noise level of the Brailler:

  1. Put the Brailler on two computer mouse pads. I suppose any thick foam pad would do.
  2. Turn down the braille pressure.
  3. Place the Brailler in front of a solid object such as a book or facing a wall.

You could also put the Brailler under a frame covered with heavy furniture moving blankets, a kind of “Kitchen Table Sound Studio” as described by kozikowski in this very forum at https://forum.audacityteam.org/t/too-compressed-rejection/52825/22

HTH
Robert

Hi robert2

I find this topic absolutely riveting, and would love to find out how it all functions, and more about this machine.

Are you saying the noise is acoustic rather than electronic?

So, we could be going down the acoustic baffling route.