Having trouble with noise cancelation

Question

First of all I should mention that while I've used other Adobe products extensively, I'm quite new to Audition and audio in general. What I'm trying to do is cancel out some background noise from some test audio I captured. I set up my Senheiser MKE 600 to capture the sounds of my feet while music was playing distantly in the background (I'm mimicking the scenario that will happen for a live dance video next week). I then recorded another file with the mic in the same position with the same music in the background, just without any other sounds/movements. I used Plural Eyes 3.5 to sync the audio, exported to Premiere Pro, then exported to Audition. I selected the track with just the background noise and inverted it. When I try to play both tracks back, there is no difference. I tried muting/unmuting the inverted background track as the sound FX track continued to play but there was absolutely no change. I tried the same thing in Audacity with the same results. From what I understand this should be a pretty straight forward task so it's frustrating to say the least. What am I missing? Any information would be greatly appreciated.

SteveG_AudioMasters_ · Answer

To get cancellation like that to work, the sound you are trying to keep has to be sample-accurate with the one you're trying to eliminate. To do this with a mic in a room and a distant source, your chances are, I'm afraid, absolutely zero. Just you moving about near the mic would be enough to prevent cancellation, but in this instance you have a list of other contributing factors as well, any of which would prevent it ever working. A few of them are: a 0.1 degree change in the room temperature; even a minute change in the position of either the source or the mic; a slightly different position for you (that would make a big difference, in fact).

Basically for this sort of cancellation to work well - generally it requires a capture of the source in both instances by electronic means, so no intervening room conditions to change.

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