Messed up Noise Removal, is there any way to undo?

[Brendan5FAD]

I have a very long audio file of dialogue a friend recorded. I won't have an opportunity to re-record the audio, so I have to work with what I have. I made the mistake of editing the file directly instead of making a copy and I overdid the noise removal, now a lot of the quieter parts of the dialogue sound tinny and muffled. I had already saved and worked a bit with the file before realizing this problem, so now I cannot access the history, but there is no "original" file I can go back and get as I recorded it directly in Audition. I know that this was a stupid mistake and how to avoid it now, but is there any way for me to "undo" Noise Reduction, even partially? Or is there anyway to access backups of the .wav file? (From what I can tell on .sesx files get backed up automatically)

[SteveG_AudioMasters_ · Accepted solution]

I'm afraid that if you saved the resultant file in Waveform view, all backups are cleared. And one of the things about NR is that you can't undo it - you have no information about what the file is supposed to be returning to. In that sense, it's just like recorded distortion - you can't undo that either. Yes it's a bitter pill - and hopefully one you'll only swallow once...

If you do NR in Multitrack view you can't use the 'process' version - which to my way of thinking (and experience) is the only version that works properly (if you are careful) - but you aren't actually altering the original file, so there's something to come back to.

The basic rules for not screwing up process-based NR are: Only work on a copy of the original. Start out with the highest FFT setting, and don't take more than about 3dB off. Repeat that twice more, each time with a lower FFT setting but still not taking off more than 3dB. Yes, you have to resample each time which is a pain, but this is also what stops the process screwing up. Quite often with a lot of noise, it's worse at lower frequencies, so you can afford to tip the graph down a bit, which means that your LF noise gets slightly more reduction. Typically, a pass looks like this:

It is often worth experimenting with the Precision Factor and Smoothing values - everything else can pretty much stay as it is.

[Brendan5FAD]

Yeah, unfortunate, but that's what I was guessing. Thanks for the advice though!