NEED HELP ASAP! cleaning up phone audio

Hey everyone! I had a previous issue and posted it here and had great success with the help that was provided! I’m in a pinch for some last minute help on a different issue: I edit my theater companies monthly podcast and my co host didn’t have good internet so had to call in to my zoom room with her phone. The audio, as you might assume, is awful in comparison to mine. Is there anyway to edit/clean up/fix their audio so it doesn’t sound so drastically bad compared to mine??? I’ll admit I’m basically a beginner with audacity…I have a handle on the basics but no fancy tricks. Any tips and suggestions are welcome as I have to release by Monday the 21st. Thanks again! I’m using audacity version 2.4.2 on my Mac OS Catalina 10.15.7

co host didn’t have good internet

I have internet like that. Downlink is OK, Uplink is terrible.

Is there anyway to edit/clean up/fix their audio so it doesn’t sound so drastically bad compared to mine???

In a word, no. If the phone was being used hand’s-free, then the phone is in full correction mode and there is no good voice there to rescue. Had she been wearing headphones and called you from a quiet room, then you wouldn’t be here.

You are facing the Hollywood Solution. Transcribe her words to paper and have an actor read them in front of a good recorder in a quiet room. Mix your voice and hers in an edit session.

Or get her to do it. I’ve been able to get an iPhone SE with voice recorder to perform way better than you think.

There are a couple of tricks to it, but I did this in my garage.


Or reshoot the whole thing.

If you get a patch to work, post back how you did it.

Koz

If part of the problem is difference in volume between the two parties,
that can be improved with Audacity’s “LevelSpeech2.ny” plugin.

[ But bubbly phone-type compression artefacts are not fixable ].