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JayNewWeb
Inspiring
April 8, 2019
Question

Cleaning up poor quality outdoor voice recording

  • April 8, 2019
  • 1 reply
  • 762 views

I shot some video of myself doing an exercise training outdoors and experimented with doing the audio going into my smartphone. The result was not good, but since the video will be challenging to redo I want to see what I can do to clean up the audio and hopefully make it usable.

This audio was done with a Sony self-powered mic with a Sennheiser XLR-to-TRRS adapter I got from B&H to go into my Samsung S9 phone. The noise from traffic etc is really loud and my voice is muffled even though it was a lavalier mic.

(I should have tested it before shooting and I did not -- I assumed the video would be challenging and that the audio would be okay. I did test it indoors and that came out fine, but I didn't test outdoors. In the future, I will experiment first and will ask B&H for more advice.)

I'm not an audio pro or an Audition expert by any means. But I can follow basic instructions. I've tried applying Noise Reduction and that helped, but I'm at a loss to do much more than that.

I'd greatly appreciate advice on cleaning up this audio, please.

Here's the file: 4-6-19 in field - audio for video - orig.wav - Google Drive

Thanks!

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    1 reply

    SteveG_AudioMasters_
    Community Expert
    SteveG_AudioMasters_Community Expert
    Community Expert
    April 8, 2019

    Even though a lot of the background noise could be reduced, as you've found, your major problem with this is that it was recorded with an automatic level controlled recorder, so every bang and crash cuts the gain (and the background noise) right back, and it 'bounces'. There's no known way to correct this effectively (or even at all, really) because all ALCs are different, and you can't extract the control law - which is what you'd need to do to counteract it.

    I'd be looking at a narrative here, and just keeping a little of that audio in the background to stop the video appearing to be completely disembodied, I think.

    J
    JayNewWebAuthor
    Inspiring
    April 8, 2019

    Thanks, Steve!

    For future reference, any idea whether a different recording app on the smartphone might produce a better result in the future?

    I used this: Easy Voice Recorder Pro by Digipom

    I also found this, which I can try in the future if you think it's worth it: Voice Recorder Pro by Recorder and Smart Apps

    I assume you'd agree the mic and adapter I used were fine, and going to a lower-end device such as this Polsen mic with this Rode adapter would not improve a thing when recording into the smartphone, correct?

    It would be nice to find a way to record into the smartphone with decent audio quality, even if just doing a selfie video outdoors with the smartphone as the video recorder.

    Or, I can limit myself to using the Canon camera and to using my Sony self-powered mic (per link in OP) directly into the camera with a long XLR cable. I assume that should do a good job even with some background noise, agreed?

    Thanks again!

    SteveG_AudioMasters_
    Community Expert
    SteveG_AudioMasters_Community Expert
    Community Expert
    April 8, 2019

    There is a setting in Easy Voice Recorder that lets you alter the quality - I'd go for the one that says 'music' on it. But really you'll have to try it to find out whether that's a real improvement or not. What you really need is an app that records at a fixed level, but has a limiter on it, rather than an automatic level control. That will give you a much 'smoother' recording. From that point of view, Voice Recorder Pro looks like it might be a better bet - I think.

    However you look at it, it's the ALC function that you want to avoid, and when I looked at the Android list of best recording apps, the one that stands out because it actually mentions this, and gives manual settings, is RecForge Pro - Audio Recorder - Apps on Google Play

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