In this video, I’ll show you how to get rid of background noise in an audio recording using Audacity.
Audacity is a free, open-source audio recorder and editor that’s available on Windows, Mac, and Linux.
Video Transcript.
In this video, I’ll show you how to get rid of background noise in an audio recording using Audacity.
Hi, my name is David and if this is your first time watching my video tutorials, and you get value from the content that you watch, kindly consider liking this video and sharing it with your friends.
Background noise can be irritating.
For example, if you have a fan or AC in your house that keeps rotating and revolving, when you’re recording your audio files, then that can act as an irritant to anybody that’s listening or consuming your content.
Let’s say you’re doing a podcast, then that is going to act as background noise and some people may not like that.
So in this video, I’ll show you how to remove the background noise, step by step inside Audacity.
So, I have an audio available.
And when you look at this particular audio, it doesn’t seem like there’s any noise of any sort.
Now, if I play it, you may not even hear the noise.
But let’s say– looking at this particular audio, the levels are extremely low, it’s going to be a little bit difficult to hear what is going on.
So let’s say we want– first of all, just because everything looks normal, we want to normalize it to a threshold that is acceptable or easily listenable to or that you can easily hear in a recording.
You don’t need to bump up the audio or volume in whatever gadget that you’re using.
So let’s press on Ctrl A.
Let’s go to Effect.
Click on normalize.
And let’s say we want to normalize our audio peak, that is the highest peak to about -3dB, just click OK.
And our audio is going to be bumped up.
Now when you look at this particular side now, you can see some frequencies available here.
Now, if we play our audio,
“Hi this is an audio…”
You may also not want or may not hear that.
Unless you’re very attentive, then these may be something that is going to affect the audio recording.
If you also recording this particular audio in a noisy place, mostly, let’s say fan noise, then the fan noise is going to be picked as background noise.
So the first step that you need to do is when recording any audio always leave some sections that have space that you can select as a noise print.
So, let’s say we want or we know this is the the noise that we want to take off, we can just select it and play.
And since we may not be hearing it because it’s extremely low, then we can just select it, and then go to Effect -Noise reduction.
Now by default, there are different things here.
The first step is you need to select a few seconds, so that you can get the noise print. Let’s say we’ve selected that particular section and click on Get noise profile.
And then everything goes off, you may think that nothing has happened.
But when you click it again and press Ctrl A, go back to effect – noise reduction.
And from this particular section, you can reduce the noise reduction, set the filters to what will work for you.
For example, let’s say we just work with a default that I have here.
12 for the noise reduction, sensitivity, and frequency smoothing of 3.
Let’s say we just click OK.
But you can also preview.
If this was noise that was easily audible just make sure you listen for the preview as you adjust to your liking.
Let’s click OK.
And what happens is that that particular noise print disappears.
Now something else that you might need to know is that depending on the noise level here, it may also result in removal of some frequencies from the audio.
Therefore the type of noise treatment or noise reduction that you do will affect the audio as well.
But for this since the audio was minimal, it was something that was easily identifiable, then it may not affect the audio as much.
So we can play again.
“Hi, this is an audio recording that has some background noise.”
When you listen to that particular audio it’s crisp, it’s all the good things that you want.
So getting rid of background noise in an audio file even if let’s say you’re a transcriber and you want to ease maybe the ear ache due to background noise, you can use this particular method.
It’s pretty easy.
Just make sure you have good ample sections to get a noise profile.
And then once you get your noise profile, you can easily use the filters available and adjust them to your liking.
These works really well if you’re a podcaster and Let’s say you are doing your recording in a place where you have the AC turned on is extremely hot.
You can always give yourself, before you start recording a couple of seconds to get the noise profile because not everybody is in a treated room, to get a noise profile so that you can work on this.
So that is how you get rid of background noise in an audio file using Audacity.
Thanks for watching.
I hope that you have learned something from this particular video.
And until next time, stay safe and never stop learning.
Thank you for watching.