How to amplify audio & reduce hiss in Audition

Question

Hello. I'm working on a film where I only used one mic for a client and his wife. Audio attached to the male is perfect but the audio from his wife is really low (obviously because I didn't mic her). I typically use one mic for small interviews, but there's a specific part I'd like to include of her speaking. I know how to amplify her audio using the Effects option (Amplify & Compression), but it also raises background air which sounds like an annoying his. Is there a way to amplify her audio then reduce unwanted hiss? Thanks.

Bob Howes · Accepted Answer

Thinking about your problem, I think I might start by making a duplicate track on which you can perform as much processing as necessary on the wife's voice without needing to worry about what you're doing to the husband.

Add necessary level changes to bring the wife up to a similar level to her husband then apply noise reduction as per the instructions ryclark sent you to--they go into great detail but but basic principle is to do multiple "slight" passes (changing the FFT size and getting a new noise sample between each pass) rather than trying to do one big reduction.

Once you have two good tracks, edit so the unprocessed "husband" track is used for his voice--and the heavily processed wife track is used when she is speaking.

Finally, I suspect that, even with all the processing in the world, the wife will sound different to the close miked husband. A common trick on this is to take some of the room noise (when all else is quiet) and loop it in the background of both tracks. This will help cover up the changes in room tone.

ryclark · Answer

If you are running the latest version of Audition go to the Help menu and click on Audition Learn. there you will see a tutorial on Noise Reduction.

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