Removing echo from audio - help!

[Brad Sadler]

I have a piece of audio which is very poor quality and I am doing my best to make it at least usable but I'm still way off the mark - It might not be possible but I wanted to ask and see if anyone had any advice or methods to help out. Here's a link to a clip from the talk before and after I attempted to clean it up. I mainly used the noise reduction and dynamics processing tools

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUzTYeJEpwc&feature=youtu.be

I'm unsure exactly how it was recorded but it was in a very large room on what I am assuming is the camera's microphone. Any advice on whether this can be improved to a decent standard?

Thanks

[Richard M Knight]

Not sure you will get it a lot better, I would try the parametric eq. boost one of the bands and run the frequency up and down until you hit the 'room' frequency, it should then sound even worse. Once you have found the frequency change from boost to cut and alter the amount of cut and the Q until it sounds better (or not!)

[gunthre]

There's no room frequency, the echo is going to be just as broad in frequency range as the speaker. Izotope Rx 6 has a great de-reverb plugin I would highly recommend

[ryclark · Accepted solution]

There is not really anything that are going to be able to do to improve this audio. There is so much room reverb that I doubt that even RX6's De-reverb will help. It sounds as if there is much more reverb than direct sound and you need a decent bit of direct sound if you can ever hope to get any result from any De-reverb plugin I'm afraid.

[Bob Howes]

One last comment--there are a number of programmes (paid for) out there that claim to eliminate room echo.  I've never heard any of these that don't leave artefacts that are more objectionable than the echo.

[Ken 47]

I have only spent a few minutes on your test file but I used Izotope RX9. One file is voice only and the other is background only. Not perfect but does give you some idea as to what is possible

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

This thread is getting on for four years old. The OP has never returned to the forum. These things are easy to check, and it is advisable to do so...