HOW TO REMOVE BACKGROUND NOISE IN COMMENTARIES!

[Joshua Severi]

If you use audacity and have background noise, follow these simple steps to remove it and improve the quality of your commentaries.

1) Record some audio:


2) Highlight an area where you are not talking:


3) Go to "Effect" and then "Noise Removal"

4) You will get a window like this:


5) Click on "Get Noise Profile"

6) Next hit "Ctrl + A" to select the whole commentary. Make sure it is all selected as shown here:


7) Hit "Ctrl + R" to repeat the noise removal process. A little progress bar will show up on your screen and count down how long it will take. Time varies on length of commentary.

8) Make sure your noise has been removed by checking parts where you aren't talking. They should go from looking like this:

to looking like this:


And you're done. Now just export your commentary and edit in your video editing program of choice! Hope this helps improve the quality of your voice commentaries!

 

[BunkyFass]

Just be careful, depending on your noise removal settings you can remove a lot of your actual speaking as well. Depends on your voice aswell but I won't get into that :L

 

[obscurimity]

I say be careful, as it is possible to get that "underwater" sounding effect if you use noise removal too harshly. Personally, I do a small but of noise removal, and then using Amplitude, I completely silence certain sections, (any time I'm not talking).

 

[Joshua Severi]

Just be careful, depending on your noise removal settings you can remove a lot of your actual speaking as well. Depends on your voice aswell but I won't get into that :L

The default settings work perfectly fine. "P

 

[unknown_user0004]

The default settings work perfectly fine. "P

"The default settings work perfectly fine...for me in my particular circumstance."

FTFY

 

[BunkyFass]

Yeah they are probably fine but I have a REALLY deep british voice, and using default settings removes a bit of the bass from my voice and makes it sound a bit tinny.

 

[obscurimity]

Yeah they are probably fine but I have a REALLY deep british voice, and using default settings removes a bit of the bass from my voice and makes it sound a bit tinny.

Audacity's noise removal...it made me...it made me...AMERICAN.

 

[BunkyFass]

"The default settings work perfectly fine...for me in my particular circumstance."

FTFY

This... it can be incredibly selective on the voice, quality of microphone, and also the room you are in and any outside noise.
a weird reverb from your walls can f**k it up, but especially for me the biggest problem is the fact that I have a high quality microphone (Blue Yeti) which has a large frequency response of 20 to 20K Hertz, so there's a lot of frequencies that could be messed with :L

But then again this is only if you are picky like me (an ex Music Technology student) and have quality equipment and are very fussy about the quality of your recording :L

EDIT: Sorry if I'm blindedly wrong about particulars to any Music Techys here, it's been a while

 

[Shewquet]

Nice advice

 

[Tarmack]

Default settings are always fine, never good.

But then, noise reduction is kinda a garbage in, garbage out scenario. If your room isn't noisy and you take some time to set up the space properly, set your gain, speak loudly enough, keep from having reflective surfaces behind you, wait til the dryer is done, turn the temp down so the furnace noise doesn't get in the way, etc... Then you don't need nearly as much noise reduction if any at all.

Or you can take the easy way, buy a Blue Snowball or Yeti, power through the Noise Reduction and sound mediocre like half of YouTube.

Knowing how to use Noise Reduction is a good skill. But it's like pop filters. Meant to be a tool in the toolbox, not a magic fixall.