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Caroline5C9E
Participant
August 25, 2020
Answered

Removing male voice in the background to hear the quieter female one??

  • August 25, 2020
  • 1 reply
  • 1527 views

Hi guys,

 

so I have a recording from a classroom study where participants work in groups of two. There is a recording device (in this case, an iPad) on every table, but the groups are sitting too closely together so the recording picked up more than one group's conversation.There is one group of girls who talk very quietly and I would like to understand what they are saying, but the male voices in the background are just too loud. Can anybody think of a way to remove the (deeper, louder) male voice in the background?

 

Google just doesn't know this specific situation. I have tried opening the file in the waveform editor and opening the spectral frequency display with the colors, but I can't figure out which are the noises corresponding to the voice I want to remove...

 

Any ideas? Thanks so much in advance (a simple "it's impossible" would also help, at least then I know I don't need to keep looking...)

 

Grüße

Caro

    This topic has been closed for replies.
    Correct answer SteveG_AudioMasters_

    'It's impossible' is in fact the correct answer. NR only gets rid of continuous noise, so is no use for this, and anyway, the tools that do this sort of thing are intended to get rid of quieter sounds. Unfortunately the frequency ranges of human speech aren't actually that different - knocking out some of the lower frequencies won't aid recognition, as most of this involves the higher partials. I'm afraid you're rather stuck with this one...

    1 reply

    SteveG_AudioMasters_
    Community Expert
    SteveG_AudioMasters_Community ExpertCorrect answer
    Community Expert
    August 25, 2020

    'It's impossible' is in fact the correct answer. NR only gets rid of continuous noise, so is no use for this, and anyway, the tools that do this sort of thing are intended to get rid of quieter sounds. Unfortunately the frequency ranges of human speech aren't actually that different - knocking out some of the lower frequencies won't aid recognition, as most of this involves the higher partials. I'm afraid you're rather stuck with this one...

    C
    Caroline5C9EAuthor
    Participant
    August 25, 2020

    Awesome, thank you for the quick reply, that's very helpful. I'll just repeat the study with a better room layout, lesson learned 😉

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