Extreme echo/reverb removal distorted audio

[SangarEye]

Hi, 

I have recorded a skype call for a podcast but I have made a huge mistake. The audio is recorded twice on the same track, one with latency. Which means that I have now  an audio recording of a conversation with huge amounts of echo/reverb. 

I tried removing it by using Adobe Auditions DeReverb. It is unable te remove it. 

Can anyone plesase help me? 

Kind regards,

SangarEye

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

I'm afraid you stand no realistic chance with this at all. The problem is that you are trying to remove something that's identical to the signal you want - which makes differentiation impossible. Even if you feed the signal into a delay, invert the result and add it (which amounts to a subtraction) it's not going to work, because a fraction of a second after you've fed this signal to the delay, you'd be sending the one you want to remove to it as well - so the whole thing will either cancel out, or, more likely, get turned into a cacophony.

[SangarEye]

Thanks SteveG. Is it possible to minimze echo/reverb without sounding distorted? 

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

No, not really at all - same problem. You are trying to get rid of something spectrally identical in the same temporal space. You have no clean reference point from which to do this. Of course if you had that, you wouldn't have the problem... 😉

You really can't do any of this stuff, for good physical reasons. Pretty much everything you saw on CSI was make-believe; that program did real-world audio processing no favours at all.

[SangarEye]

Didnt watch any CSI. I am just desperate. I cant redo the interview. 

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

Whilst I am sorry for your predicament, I'm afraid that desperation is not a variable factor in the Laws of Physics.