Hollow and metallic sound on vocal audio (podcast)

So I’ve been putting off posting in the forums only because I thought I could fix this on my own. But after many days of googling and trying what I can think of, I am still stuck.

I recently started producing a podcast my girlfriend does. I inherited most of the “Audacity tweaks” we do against the files. And for the most part, they have worked great. However there are times when I will have an Ad or other segment clip she has recorded, sometimes from contributors, with either hollow or metallic/tinny audio that I cannot figure out how to resolve. Anyhow, I’ve tried all kinds of EQ tweaks I’ve found on various forum posts or web articles, to make it sound better. But it still sounds lousy.

I am dealing with all spoken audio with no music or any other background elements. I realize it could be mic placement or even room acoustics, but doesn’t happen all the time and she will have recorded two things, in the same day with essentially the same environmental dynamics.

Yeti Blue Mic (Few year old)
Windows 10 16GB RAM and SSD
Audacity 2.3.3

Here are two versions of the same clips that have the issue described above.

The first is one I haven’t done anything to. None of my normal tweaks, just raw audio as I got it
https://www.dropbox.com/s/4fithncyjrsoxwd/Midroll%20Ad%20Hollow%20and%20Metallic%20-%20untouched.mp3?dl=0

The second one I’ve run the normal set of tweaks I do when initially processing audio. I will list below the tweaks I’ve made to it
https://www.dropbox.com/s/1r8sphnjpifdwh3/Midroll%20Ad%20Hollow%20and%20Metallic%20-%20With%20normal%20changes.mp3?dl=0

First
RMS Normalize -18

Second
Compression
Threshold: -14
Noise Floor: -50
Ratio: 4:1
Attack: lowest
Release: lowest

Third
Amplify -8 (Based on ReplayGain Analysis) This is how I’ve learned to get the audio at what seems like the ideal level. Whatever ReplayGain says, I do one db less, one way or the other. Seems to work but I am totally open to a better way of getting this done

Last but not least, this is a screenshot of me trying to use the Filter Curve EQ to get rid of some of the issue. But alas, that hasn’t worked for me either.
https://www.screencast.com/t/LfgjHHnIRsZ

Thank you again for any advice or help!

(Note: I uploaded my attachments as well. Not sure which is the best method so I provided both)

IMO that hollow or metallic/tinny audio is caused by noise-reduction distortion,
there is no post-production fix to reverse that.

When the recording was made Windows may have applied noise-reduction “enhancement” before the sound got to Audacity. For future recordings you should check that all Windows audio-enhancements are turned off, see … https://youtu.be/sxnUjiGgBaI

Thank you for including a “before” clip. We can do a lot with that and gain a lot of good information. We can’t take effects or corrections out of a clip, so the best we can do with the “After” clip is tell you, “Yes. It’s broken.”

noise-reduction distortion,

What he said.

Something applied noise reduction or one of the other corrections. I measured the noise level at the beginning of the piece and it’s -96dB. That’s impossible. No microphone or recording system can do that on its own. Also see environment suppression, echo reduction, etc.

If you just can’t figure out where it’s coming from, make sure you don’t have Zoom, Skype or other program like that running in the background—or even active. They all force sound pathway changes and don’t tell you.

It’s not the worst idea to clear the machine before trying to record studio quality work. Shift+Shutdown > OK > Wait > Start.

That track is trash.

Koz