Removing echo of one track from another.

[Dylon]

I record a podcast every week through Skype and sometimes my cohosts have their headphone volume set too high, which means we get an echo of everyone else's recordings onto their tracks. It's a slight delay and not the end of the world, but it is somewhat distracting to our listeners and me (The editor). Is there some way to remove this excess audio? The person with the echoey track isn't talking whenever you can hear it the most, so I don't have a problem with silencing them at those times. But since it's 1-2 hours long, I don't have the time to individually silence the echos.

I have Audacity 2.0.0.
Thanks in advance!

[steve]

If you have each person recorded on separate tracks, you may be able to use a noise gate to reduce the echo.
If you do have each person on separate tracks and if you could post a short sample (just a few seconds, preferably in WAV or FLAC format), then we can have a look to see what can be done. See here for how to post audio to the forum: http://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic ... 49&t=72887

[Dylon]

Here it is. Track Two is the one with the echo, and Track One is the audio being echoed.

[steve]

Sorry about the delay approving your post. This site is used across all time zones and even the moderators need to sleep / eat / go to work / wash the dishes ...
We aim to approve posts within 24 hours - usually much quicker.

Here it is. Track Two is the one with the echo, and Track One is the audio being echoed.

Testing on Track 2, the noise gate available here works well: http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Nyqui ... Noise_Gate
There are instructions included with the effect.
Installation instructions are here: http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Downl ... g_Plug-ins

First, use the "Analyze Noise Level" option a couple of different gaps where there is only the echo - this gave me a suggested "Threshold" level of -30 dB.
Then apply the noise gate - It can be quite slow so you may want to apply it to sections of the track rather than the whole track at once.

Here's the result with "Level Reduction: -24" and "Gate threshold: -30" all other settings at default.

Track Two gated.flac

(81.83 KiB) Downloaded 71 times

[Dylon]

I used the Noise Gate and it works great, thank you!

Now that I've got you here, is there an easy way to level out multiple tracks? In a way that would make everyone sound like they're talking at the same volume. I do this every week by ear and sometimes I feel like it's not good enough once I've already put an episode out. If there's an easy way to make it better, it would be much appreciated!

[steve]

You could try Chris's Dynamic Compressor: http://theaudacitytopodcast.com/chriss- ... -audacity/