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Participant
September 4, 2017
Answered

How to remove this background noise

  • September 4, 2017
  • 1 reply
  • 557 views

I'm a new user of this software and I have a video of my mom talking at a bar and since it's a bar there is music playing in the background. Is there any way I can take the background music and get rid of it?

    This topic has been closed for replies.
    Correct answer Bob Howes

    There's probably not a lot you can do since (if you think about it) the music and other people talking will occupy a similar frequency band to your mum's voice.

    Without hearing it, I can only guess but you might be able to get more intelligibility by EQing your track to boost your mother's voice and slightly cut everything else--to determine what frequencies to use, you'll have to experiment and use your ears.

    Also, you can sometimes do some surprising things in Waveform view with the Spectral Frequency Display.  Basically you draw around some of the frequencies you want less of and delete them.  Again you can only judge this by ear.

    If you'd like some of us to have a listen to your recording and try to be more specific, you could post a short sample on whatever cloud sharing site you like--alas you can't post audio files direct to this forum.

    However, in the longer term, the only way to get a better recording is to change things a source and get a mic closer to the person talking--either on a boom/fish pole just out of sight or else a clip on lavalier mic.  On camera mics are next to useless for anything other than a background atmosphere.

    1 reply

    Bob Howes
    Bob HowesCorrect answer
    Inspiring
    September 4, 2017

    There's probably not a lot you can do since (if you think about it) the music and other people talking will occupy a similar frequency band to your mum's voice.

    Without hearing it, I can only guess but you might be able to get more intelligibility by EQing your track to boost your mother's voice and slightly cut everything else--to determine what frequencies to use, you'll have to experiment and use your ears.

    Also, you can sometimes do some surprising things in Waveform view with the Spectral Frequency Display.  Basically you draw around some of the frequencies you want less of and delete them.  Again you can only judge this by ear.

    If you'd like some of us to have a listen to your recording and try to be more specific, you could post a short sample on whatever cloud sharing site you like--alas you can't post audio files direct to this forum.

    However, in the longer term, the only way to get a better recording is to change things a source and get a mic closer to the person talking--either on a boom/fish pole just out of sight or else a clip on lavalier mic.  On camera mics are next to useless for anything other than a background atmosphere.