Today we are going to see how to eliminate background noise from an audio recording with Audacity in order to leave your audios completely free of any annoying ambient noise.
Audacity is a powerful sound editing program that even professionals use. The best of all is that this program is totally free and you can download it without any kind of problems from its official website.
It is quite complex, has countless options and is not exactly suitable for those who are just starting out. Unless they have a predisposition to follow guides and tutorials on it.
When we record our voice, on many occasions a background noise is felt, the famous “ Ambient noise ” that can be annoying, especially in the parts where we do not speak. You can even hear our breathing, something that does not look very good to say in an audio.
With Audacity we can eliminate that noise in a fairly simple way, which we are going to do next with this simple tutorial which you must follow step by step and in a short time you will have your audio free of noise.
Remove noise from an audio track with Audacity
- Once you have Audacity downloaded, we will proceed to open the program to load the audio file.
- For this we are going to click on ” File ” and then we are going to ” Import “.
- Next, we select ” Audio ” which will open a window for us to search for the audio from which we want to remove the background noise .
- In order to eliminate ambient noise, what we will need is to get a sample to make the program understand what we consider noise and what not.
- What we will have to do is select a few seconds where we hear a lot of noise to make the program understand where it is. Many professionals when they begin to record allow a certain amount of time to pass and then be able to carry out this process quickly .
- Look in the audio for a moment where you are not speaking or hearing any kind of sound that you do not want to eliminate. When you find it select a few seconds, no more than 3 or 4.
- Once you find this area we are going to use the selection tool which is in the upper area of the screen.
How to remove ambient noise from audio
- Now that we have the selected sample, the only thing left to do is go to the ” Effect ” menu and then select the option that says ” Noise reduction “.
- This will make Audacity take the zone of noise that we indicate and you can proceed to eliminate it.
- Then we click on ” Get noise profile ” and choose the fragment in question.
- We return again to Effect> Noise reduction and we can see a window where we must adjust the parameters that we are going to use to eliminate noise.
- The default setting is generally the one for eliminating average noise. However, we recommend that you try to play with these options to get the best result.
- Once you complete this, try to play the audio and you will see that the noise from it was completely eliminated.
- When you finish editing the audio, the only thing left to do is simply click on File> Export and save in the format you want . This way you will get clean audio from ambient noise.
As you can see, it is a simple tutorial with which in a few steps you can eliminate all ambient noise and other annoying noises with Audacity. Likewise, if you still have any kind of doubt, you can leave us a comment a little below and we will be happy to help you as necessary.
To effectively remove background noise from an audio recording, you can follow these steps in a tabular format guide:
| Step | Description | Tools/Software |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Import Audio | Load your audio file into the software. | Audacity, Adobe Audition, or similar software |
| 2. Listen to Audio | Identify areas with and without background noise. | – |
| 3. Noise Profiling | Select a portion of audio that contains only background noise. | – |
| 4. Noise Reduction | Apply a noise reduction effect using the noise profile. | Noise reduction feature in the software |
| 5. Adjust Settings | Fine-tune the settings (like decibel levels, sensitivity) to reduce noise without affecting the main audio. | – |
| 6. Preview | Listen to the preview to ensure the main audio is clear. | – |
| 7. Apply Effects | Apply the noise reduction to the entire track or selected parts. | – |
| 8. Additional Edits | Optionally, use other tools (like equalization) to further enhance audio quality. | Equalizer, Compressor |
| 9. Export | Save the edited file in the desired format. | – |
Additional Tips:
- Always keep a backup of the original audio file.
- Adjust noise reduction settings gradually to avoid over-processing.
- Use headphones for more accurate monitoring of changes.
- If available, use AI-based noise reduction tools for more advanced noise filtering.
