How to standardize to -16 LUFS but reduce background noise without echo

Question

When I edit my podcast, I usually do so with my headphones, so I didn't realize until recently when I listened in a car that my podcast was mixed too quietly. So I looked it up and learned from a bunch of videos that I need to be matching my loudness to -16 LUFS. The issue is, when I do this, I get a lot of background noise. Normally I deal with ambient background noise like this by taking a noise print and using the noise reduction tool, but this time when I do it, there is a strong echo that is produced after running the noise reduction process.

Any tips for how to deal with this? I've attached a video with the audio so you can hear what I am talking about (scrub to 0:55).

SteveG_AudioMasters_ · Answer

You're probably only hearing it more because it's relatively louder - what it actually sounds like is a slow gate operating when there are pauses, so I expect that this is the Spectral Decay Rate at work, as much as anything.

You would probably notice this far less if you did your NR in several FFT-size passes (three is quite a good number) and only take a bit of noise off at each pass. And make sure that at least one of them is at the highest FFT setting there is. Yes it's a bit of a faff, and you have to resample the noise each time, but the results are generally far better.

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