I have the latest version of Audacity (downloaded today) and run on Mac OS High Sierra 10.13
I can’t get Noisegate to appear in my Effects menu. I followed the earlier post on this but didn’t solve issue for me.
When went to Audacity wiki and select download for Noisegate a menu pops up and says “can’t read this file” so I went to the ZIP file at the end of the Noisegate entry and dowloaded from there.
Per instructions, I put the noisegate.ny in the plug-in folder for Audacity in my Applications folder.
Opened Audacity, Went to Effects Menu, selected Add/Removed Plug-Ins and … no Noisegate option
Have shutdown/relaunched Audacity several times, re-downloaded noisegate several times. Nothing.
Thoughts?
Issue I am trying to address is echoey audio. If there’s a better plug-in option I’d love to hear about it!
I went to the Library Folder in the HD initially but have since plugged in the ~Library/Application … in the search box for the “This Mac” and “Mac HD” and get one html link to an Audacity wiki page for ffmpeg export options. Is there some other place I should be entering ~Library/Application … ? I’ve never run into this so my apologies if this is basic stuff for using a plug-in.
The audio I have isn’t quite as bad as the sample you gave, but similar. It’s for a podcast and my host wants to record at her office which is a cavernous concrete/glass space. I warned her the echoing would be an issue, but thought I might be able tackle it with the Noise Reduction function. Not.
I get it’s not going to be perfect and I am pushing for a new space to record. I will post my audio to the link you gave. I will keep trying on Noisegate. Have also seen ERA-R from accusonus. Anyone tried that?
Echoes are rough. There’s no “key.” Echoes are your own voice coming back to the microphone late after bouncing off the wall. So you are asking the software to remove you from yourself. Now multiply times many different echoes that change when you move.
Well, someone always says, the echoes are always quieter than the main voice, right, just sheer off everything lower than a certain volume.
Right. That means you and only you can announce and you have to do it exactly the same volume for the whole podcast. There’s no way to tell the software when you’re planning on being expressive. It certainly can’t handle more than one voice. Or it can if they’re separate. Treat your voice and then later, the guest.
We can’t split a mixed performance into individual voices, instruments and sounds.
I can do that for pages. There’s just no win with echoes.
I would build it into the podcast. Pick a desirable location and tell people you’re using it.
“From the lobby of the Builtmore Hotel in Midtown Manhattan, this is the Doobly-Doo podcast. Today I’m here with my guest…etc.”
Add echoes to make it sound like a huge room. Add background crowd noises as required. You need to play “Producer.” If you ever wondered what a Producer does (upper case intentional), this is it.
I had dinner at a friend’s house and their living room has a stunning echo. I am going to record something theatrical in there. I really am.
You don’t need any more advice. You know what the problem is and more or less how to fix it.
You know you’re in trouble when you go into a shoot depending on a post production rescue.
The Main Conference Room where I used to work was soundproofed. That went right by most people, but the sound people knew instantly what it was. Many sound shoots when through that room and we were very friendly to the scheduling people.
“Are you OK? Want a cup of coffee or something?”
“Say, can I get the Main next Tuesday??”
Sound proof room is the goal! Lesson learned on INSISTING we have a better room set up. Koz, I am producing these first couple ones and have already suggested we put language in her intro about “Coming from my office …” But I LOVE the suggestion about maybe adding additional scene setting to get us into the podcast. Will try that.
Update: Bill, thanks to your patience I got Noisegate Enabled. As predicted, not much help. Also got free trial of ERA-R but am working with customer support there because it’s not working right. Living the dream…
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I couldn’t do it either. I could make it different versions of ratty, but not any better.
You have a good presenting voice with good expression and meter, Once you get the echoes sorted, you should be flying.
Your clip suggests very strongly there should be a live audience watching you and that accounts for the room sound. I’m serious. Work with that. Download free audience sounds.
Certainly this has noticeable distortion, but some reduction in the echo.
For this, I made a copy of the original, normalized to 0 dB, filtered out low bass and high treble (leaving the frequencies that are noticeably echoing), then applied the Limiter with a very strong setting, and finally reduced the level to about the level of the echo. Then I used that as a “noise sample” for the Noise Reduction effect, and applied to a normalized copy of the original.
