Eliminate distortion from car exhaust audio clip?

Report · Jan 25, 2017

Hey guys, so the other day I decided to try and capture a recording of my car exhaust. I used a Go Pro with an external lavalier mic positioned on my back bumper.

For the most part it seemed that the audio was decent with the exception of some slight wind noise (fluttering, hissing?) and distortion under hard acceleration.

I'm not sure if it's possible to "clean" this up in Audition to make it sound a little more crisp. I'm a new user to the Audition suite and I have little to no background in audio editing. I found some tutorials online on clearing up distortion and hissing etc. I've viewed the spectral pattern and tried to eliminate certain frequencies but the audio always ends up sounding unnatural, hollow, and almost like you're listening to it underwater.

What would you guys, the experts, recommend doing?

Here is a sample clip:

https://ufile.io/44dbb

If someone can take a quick shot at cleaning it up and letting me know what was done I would be very grateful!

Thank you!

Report · Jan 26, 2017

Well, I had a listen. The most objectionable bits for me were some audible "clicks" particularly in first and second gear. However I found that the Spot Healing Brush Tool in the Spectral Frequency display did a good job of fixing this. The Spectral display is either Shift+D or the small box on the menu row (next to the Wave form picture). The spot healing tool is the dotted box with a bandaid over it, also on the menu display (but only when Spectral View is open. FYI, I got best results setting the Spectral Healing brush to 6 pixels.

Any clipping distortion was before the digital recording which is as a correct level so there's not much you can do about it.

What I might try would be some EQ to cut the low end slightly and maybe exaggerate the up mids and highs, again slightly. Audition has a number of EQ systems but the easiest, most intuitive to use would be the 30 band graphic (Effects/Filters and EQ/Graphic 30 band). Just have have a play with lowering faders at the left hand end slightly and raising thing in the middle/upper ranges. Since only you know the sound you want, you'll need to experiment a bit.

Hope this helps