I have an iMovie project filmed in a hall from a distance. The voices in the soundtrack have an echoing/hollow sound, very difficult to listen to. I can import the soundtrack into Audacity, my question is, can I use Audacity to improve the sound through any filters etc?
Echoes and reverberation are almost impossible to remove.
You may be able to make some marginal improvement by:
Reduce the level of low frequency noise using the Equalization effect http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/Equalization
Reduce background hiss using the Noise Removal effect. http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/Noise_Removal
Noise removal will not be effective if there is a high noise level and the voices are quiet because Noise Removal will do too much damage to the sounds that you want to keep and the result will be a metallic bubbly sound.
It is unlikely that you will be able to make much improvement.
The correct solution is to use a microphone that is close to the sound that you want to record, but it’s too late for that now.
Room echoes are one of the sure ways to kill a show. An echo is the performer’s voice bouncing from the walls and coming to the microphone later and at lower volume than the main voice. The more walls, the more echoes, so in effect, you’re asking the software to remove the performer from herself.
Koz