Filtering Noise with Audacity

Achieving clear audio recordings can be challenging, especially in noisy environments. Sometimes, it's hard to avoid capturing background noise in your audio files. So, how do you handle audio files containing noise? The good news is there's an easy way to remove unwanted sounds from your recordings with Audacity.

Filtering Noise with Audacity

Audacity is a free audio editing program created by a community of sound experts. Audacity supports nearly every audio file type and features a noise removal tool specifically designed to address the challenges you're facing. It's powerful, user-friendly, and completely free. Here's how to use Audacity to eliminate noise in your audio files.

I. Guide to Removing Background Noise with Audacity

To filter noise with Audacity, start by downloading and installing the software on your computer.

Next, follow these steps:

Step 1: Open Audacity and choose File > Import to import the audio recording you want to noise-filter into the program.
Step 2: Select the portion of the audio recording containing only the surrounding noise.
Step 3: Go to the Effects menu and choose Noise Removal.

Step 4: In the Noise Removal window, click on the Get Noise Profile button. This allows Audacity to identify what needs to be filtered out. Essentially, this function selects the surrounding noise that should be removed from your audio file.

Step 5: Now, select and mark all the audio you want to eliminate.

Step 6: Go to the Effects menu again and choose Noise Removal.

Step 7: Adjust the settings if necessary or keep the default settings and click OK.

Step 8: Listen again to ensure your audio file is no longer affected by surrounding noise.

Here is the waveform diagram of the audio file before and after removing background noise using Audacity:

II. How to Reduce Noise Before Recording

Before recording, you can employ some methods to reduce surrounding noise, such as:

1. Turn off noisy devices

Fans, air conditioners, refrigerators, computers, and various other devices can introduce unwanted noise into your audio recording. Therefore, before starting to record, turn off these devices if possible.

2. Find a quiet space

If you can't turn off noisy machinery and devices, you may consider moving to a quieter workspace.

3. Reduce noise from your computer fan

Position your microphone away from the computer and place it as far as possible. If you're using a laptop, try to close unnecessary programs to prevent fan activation.

4. Switch to Dynamic Microphone or Electret Mic

Micro Condenser (also known as Electret Mic) can capture beautiful sound ranges, but they are more sensitive to room noise. On the other hand, Mic Dynamic (also known as Dynamic Mic) traditionally may not excel in certain sound ranges like low frequencies compared to Condenser Mics, but they focus more on what they capture and are less sensitive to room noise.

5. Reduce Gain and sit close to the microphone

You might think sitting close to the microphone will distort your sound, and you're right. That's why you lower the Gain, meaning the mic sensitivity. The more sensitive the mic, the more noise it picks up.

6. Use a USB converter

If you're recording directly into your computer, converting Analog audio signals to Digital before reaching your computer has proven to be an effective method to reduce computer noise. Use a converter with a 3.5mm jack or the Behringer U-PHORIA UMC202HD recording sound card with an RCA jack. This works well for desktops and laptops.

Explore More: How to Record with Audacity

In this article, Mytour has guided you on how to filter out background noise with Audacity. But before recording, consider implementing some of the mentioned techniques to minimize noise picked up in your audio file.

Additionally, users can also use Audacity to separate vocals from a song, preserving their favorite part of the music.

Discover More: How to Extract Vocals with Audacity