Help, Interview with Two Speakers, One Spoke Louder

[anthonyr8803053]

Hi there,

I recently recorded an interview with two speakers, and used the RODE Wireless Go II, so both were transmitting to the one receiver. One of the interviewees spoke noticeable louder than the other, and I set the audio level on the mic to ensure he didn't peak.

I'm trying to edit the audio and I just can't seem to get the softer speaker audio to sound any good compared to the louder speaker. Does anyone have any experience with this issue, and what are some ways to try and match the softer speaker with the louder one? It isn't as simple as boosting the decibals, as that brings more noise, but then using 'denoise' makes it sound strange... Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I've attached an audio file with the first speaker being the louder one, and then the softer speaker after applying a 'Balanced Male Voice' preset.

Thanks,
Anthony

[chrisw44157881]

when you have the same audio clip with vastly different audio, its much easier to use audio compression than try to keyframe. there's two types, compression and limiting. I swear by loudmax.blogspot dot com and strangely its also free.  now, if the noise floor is too high, you may have to use adobe audition or izotope rx to remove the really bad parts.

[R Neil Haugen]

Ouch ... lifting the second speaker also makes the room reverb even more notable, and that's a painful nut to crack.

Sometimes the de-reverb option ... applied in small amounts, and by testing where on the spectrum you apply the most de-reverb ... can help match this sort of thing. When it works it's awesome but it doesn't work for everything by a long shot.

But part of matching the two is going to be matching the reverb as "felt" by the listener. You might need to apply a small amount of de-reverb to the one, and add a titch to the other to get the reverb feel to match as closely as possible.

Neil