This is a tutorial on recording and editing out unwanted sounds in Audacity, a free audio editor for PC or MAC.
Whether you’re recording vocals for projects or doing voiceovers, editing and cleaning up your recording would be an essential step. These few simple steps in audio editing will make your audio sound prominent, having it sounding what we producers call, ‘commercial’.
Introducing the key audio editor – (Best of all? It’s FREE)
Download it off here: http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
First – Check check & check!
First thing you want to do before hitting the Red recording button is to check the soundcard which should be linked and listed in Audacity. For my case here, we have the M-Audio Mobilepre USB here. Set channels to Mono as we’re recording with a microphone, (assuming you have one plugged in to your sound card ). A quick tip for you newbies: Microphones are mono!
You’ll see waveforms kicking in once the record button is hit. Now set your levels right. Read or sing a line from your script. Make sure it is audible but the waveforms does not touch the borders of the track where it will start to clip and distort. Turning the gain knob on your soundcard, get a sweet gain level that works and get ready to record for real.
Close the track and hit record
You can listen to the short recording I did here:
Dirty Recording by thecatstudio
You’ll notice unwanted sounds that should be removed in the recording. And from the diagram below, you’ll see there are small waveforms recorded in the track together with recordings we want. To remove this, select a small portion of that unwanted audio that you want removed from your recording; look at diagram below.
Here’s the dirty audio sound. Listen to it or download it if you must.
Noisy Profile Sound by thecatstudio
Go to noise Effect > Noise Removal.
Go ahead and click on get noise profile here. What you are doing here is actually telling Audacity the unwanted noise that you do not want. Next step, ‘step 2′, adjust the noise reduction amount you’ll want. Having this at 35-40 dB would be nice. Something that filters out the noise you do not want, but at the same time does not destroy the audio you recorded. Oh, and make sure you have selected the whole waveform before executing step 2 here. Leave the other settings as shown here, that would do you fine.
Having done that, you audio would be much cleaner and clearer. The last step to treat your audio is to make it loud and audible for listeners. This step is straightforward. Select the whole waveform again, head on to Effects>Normalize. Leave the settings here to -0.0dB as it’s the loudest your waveform will go before getting clipped. Follow the settings I’ve shown here on the diagram below.
Here is how it should sound after all that editing! Phewww. Sound clear and great!
Clean Voice Over by thecatstudio
Alright, so the waveforms are noticeably bigger and now it’s time for exporting. So export and choose the format you need here. Stick with wav for high quality audio, but if you need a smaller file size, go for mp3.
And that is it! Done! That’s your first recording done professionaly! Congratulations! Now its ready for distribution to your local movie producer or if you want to upload them online as demos. Anything at all!
If you have any questions do not hestitate to drop me a mail. I’ll answer your questions and with this, good luck!
Soundcard used: M-Audio Mobilepre USB
Microphone used: Samson Co3U
Audacity on an Imac
For more in-depth learning and secrets to uncover your career in the music industry, join FMI today!
Reuben Chng
—-
Reuben is an author of the FMI and also a producer of The Cat Studio. Contact Reuben at reuben@thecatstudio.com.my or buzz at 016-4737281
[...] Click here to see a crash course on : Recording & editing in Audacity [...]