How to clean up sound files

[3_blacklions]

I have some audio files made with hidden voice recorders from when my wife was having an affair with her personal trainer. I want to get a clearer/amplified quality for playback so that I can use them to write a "Loving Wives" story. It will make a good read. How do I do this? Willing to share the files with somebody who has the expertise to minimise the background noise and extract the voices.

 

[CWatson]

What you'll want is some sort of amplifier to just take everything that's there and make it louder. After that you'll want a De-Esser, or something like it. All noises have a frequency in hertz, including consonants, and a De-Esser simply turns off all noise at a certain frequency. So all you have to do there is tune the De-Esser to the frequency (or frequencies) of the background ambient noise. You may lose some actual consonants, but that's the price you pay. This can also be done with an equalizer.

Both of these things are available in Audacity, an open-source audio-editing suite which is not nearly as powerful as, say, Pro Tools, but is also infinitely cheaper (IE $600 for Pro Tools vs. $free for Audacity). (And no, you can't pirate Pro Tools--or rather, you can, but it won't do you any good, because the program refuses to function unless you have one of Avid's proprietary peripherals plugged into your computer. These "Mbox" peripherals start from $150 for a used Mbox 1 to $375 for a brand-new Mbox 3.)

If you're trying to filter out actual cars passing by, though, or dog barks, or whatever, that might not be possible. Or rather, it might be, by a genuine recording engineer who is worth $50/hr and will charge you accordingly.

Hope this helps!

 

[BuckyDuckman]

Audacity is a free audio editor that has many filters which can do quite a bit. Get it, make copies of the files and experiment.

 

[pfflyerhot]

Audacity is a free audio editor that has many filters which can do quite a bit. Get it, make copies of the files and experiment.

Agreed.