Remove hissing noise using Audacity

if you get some hissing noise in your recordings you can remove or reduce that with audacity I will get to details of how hissing sound gets in recording in a bit but first let's hear this audio sample okay now I think it will be the perfect recording because that well it is a raw recording that needs processing before using this anywhere also the hissing noise was not audible clearly so I will make it loud using the normalize effect normalize acts as a volume control you can set the peak amplitude and the overall audio volume will increase to keep the focus on noise reduction I am skipping details of normalize effect I will set the peak amplitude to -3 and if you are interested in more information on the normalization you will find a link in the description let's hear the recording again okay now I think it will be the perfect recording this time the hissing noise is clearly Audible and the overall volume level of the audio is good enough to use in other projects for example if you want to share this audio on YouTube or in a podcast the volume level in the Talking part is good enough but the hissing noise is also loud enough to notice so how do we get rid of the hissing noise well you have to take two measures during recording and after recording I will first discuss the after recording measure the noise reduction effect in audacity later I will let you know the measures you should take during the recording to reduce noise in audacity you have to select a noise sample from the recording this noise sample can be in the beginning middle or anywhere from the recording it will do as long as the noise sample matches the noise you want to remove from the recording I will select a noise sample from the beginning after selecting the noise sample go to effect noise reduction if you do not know it already audacity has a set of built-in effects to improve your sound noise reduction is one of them and it is fairly easy to use noise reduction is a two-step process step one is to give audacity the noise sample audacity will use this noise sample to find matching noise in your audio and will remove that according to the settings of Step 2. I will get back to step two in a moment let's complete the first step by giving audacity the noise profile after giving audacity the noise profile select the parts of the audio from where you want to remove that noise in most cases that noise is present all over the audio so select everything inside a track by double clicking go to noise reduction again in Step 2 you have to adjust these sliders to get the best of noise reduction I will explain all these sliders briefly and it is important to understand the effect of these sliders you set how much noise you want to reduce from the noise reduction slider the default value is 12 but there is a catch the bigger the noise reduction value the more harshness is introduced after noise reduction so you have to try to find a sweet spot for noise reduction which will reduce the noise but keep the voice smooth sensitivity is the way to tell audacity how aggressive it should be in noise reduction 24 is the most aggressive mode and zero is the least aggressive mode if you set the sensitivity to zero no noise reduction happens regardless of what value you set in the field it would be best to use the default value of 6 for the sensitivity because setting it too high or too low can introduce some side effects in typical cases there is no solid reason to change the sensitivity value from its default value of 6. audacity has a dedicated manual page for most of its built-in effects which is accessible through the help icon these manuals are an excellent place to learn about audio editing overall it suggests using a value of 6 on all three fields for spoken words these settings reduce Noise by keeping the tone of the original recording intact but if the hissing noise is louder you may need to increase the noise reduction value the default value of frequency smoothing is three but for voice a value of 6 works best at first it may seem like frequency smoothing is doing nothing in noise reduction but it has other significance when audacity performs noise reduction a gap in frequency distribution occurs as it removes matching noise the Gap in frequency distribution can lead to harshness in the sound frequency smoothing tries to reduce or close the gap and the sound becomes less harsh in my experience a value of 6 works best for frequency smoothing as suggested in the audacity manual I would set the noise reduction as six though a value of May 6 not be enough for louder noise you can either apply these settings by clicking OK or preview the audio with these settings the preview plays six seconds of audio okay and now I think it will be the perfect recording because that I think the noise is strong enough to notice so I will try a value of 12 for noise reduction okay now I think it will be the perfect recording because uh that the noise is still there in a small amount but you can do little about it if you increase the noise reduction value too much it will distort the audio let's check that with a value of 21. okay now I think it will be the perfect recording because uh that so you notice the voice is distorted a bit though the hissing noise is gone the big question is what are the ideal settings for noise reduction a value of six on all three sliders is ideal but works only with a bit of white noise I suggest you set the noise reduction value at nine and the other sliders at six if you are still not getting satisfactory audio results you have to rethink your recording strategy it would help if you placed your microphone in a way so that less white noise is captured white noise is constant hissing noise from laptops fan AC units or recording devices audacity noise reduction only works for white background noise if you have irregular background noise like traffic noise or dog barking you cannot remove that using audacity actually you cannot remove that kind of background noise for free paid software like isotope RX can remove that kind of noise but it is costly software so if you are watching this video to learn about removing irregular background noise I can only suggest not letting those sounds in the recording back to audacity noise reduction where you should focus on noise in the talking parts you can use an effect like a noise gate to completely eliminate noise in the silent part if you get a satisfactory noise reduction in the talking parts that will be your best noise reduction setting okay now I think it will be the perfect of course if you are recording the audio for a project where you have to follow some guidelines this noise reduction may not be sufficient but if you plan to reduce noise for YouTube videos or want to share your podcast you should aim for a setting that makes the White Noise less noticeable if you see little noise in the waveform or in the meter you should not be worried as long as that noise is very little to get noticed I have another suggestion for you though it is not free but offers a free trial I am not affiliated with the script but I find it useful it especially works both for white background noise and irregular background noise you can get up to three hours of audio editing into script which is good enough to check it I find it useful and you can give it a go it helps to make your recording better without knowing much about audio editing I hope you now understand noise reduction better thanks for watching and see you next

Channel: Master Editor

Views: 30,489

Keywords: remove background noise, noise removal, audacity noise reduction best settings, audacity tutorial for beginners, audacity, audacity tutorial, audacity 3.2, audio noise removal, audacity noise removal, noise reduction

Id: BwoWSpIExtk

Length: 8min 2sec (482 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 21 2022