Best Audacity Compressor, Noise Reduction and EQ Settings for Voice Editing

 The goal is to improve intelligibility and qualities of the voice, without the changes causing an unnatural sound.

 Here are some Audacity plugin sample settings that will help you get started on the best settings for  professional sound even when recording at home or with a cheaper microphone than you would like.

Here is a very quick editing workflow to try. As you try different effects, you can use File>save>backup to save the changes you have made so far in a safe place while leaving the work file active to keep working on. Just change the name so save a later version leaving previous backups safe. Take notes or name files by what editing was last.

Quick and Dirty Workflow

Remove clicks, unusual breaths, silences and umm’s.  Then use noise remover on defaults
You can use noise reduction to lower volume on loud breaths and such instead of having a dead  silence. Removing all human noises is an unnatural.sound. Reducing distracting sounds is basically doing what your ears but the amplified mic just records as is.
 Compress using Audacity compressor defaults.
 Equalize -add 3 to 6 Db at 315, 2k and 4k. Lower your lowest and highest frequencies by approx 5 Db.. Shrill S sounds, called sibilance usually resides around 9k, bring down the gain around there if it’s annoying
Normalize to-3Db peak.

Audacity Equalization For Voiceover, Audacity Audio Editor, Audacity the key to effective home voiceover production, Audacity Tutorials: How to Record and Edit Audio with Audacity, Audio Editor,

 Typical Workflow Sequence using Audacity 

  • Normalizer Plugin:  Immediately after recording capture (or import) of your audio this effect should be used to remove any DC offset that may be present. CHECK THE BOX TO REMOVE DC OFFSET
  • UNCHECK OTHER BOXES
  • Normalization is normally best done last before export of the production audio.ONE TIME

Try using EQ to rreduce frequencies below 80Hz and above 12kHz to make your recording sound better. This reduces low‑end rumble and high‑frequency noise, and if done before compression, the compressor's make-up gain won't increase the level of that noise with the voice..

 Some Sample Compressor Effect Settings To Get You Started

 You need to leave a few seconds of ambient sound only before actual content recording. If this is to be a long or interrupted recording session, or if background noise is likely to change, such as outdoors, venue with audience, be aware of the need for additional voice free sections for noise sampling and tag or make a note of lication in file by time(elapsed) 

Select the entire audio file
Threshold -12dB
Noise Floor -40dB
Ratio 2:1 for most jobs
Attack 0.20 secs
Release 1.0 (decay}
Tick Make-up gain for 0 dB after compressing

Try Alternate settings as follows:

Select the entire audio file

(but 5:1 is a lot, 3:1maybe)
Threshold: -30 dB
Noise Floor: -50dB
Ratio: 5:1
Attack Time: 0.10 secs
Release Time: 1.0 secs
check box for Make-up gain for 0 dB after compressing
 
Another alternate compressor setting
 Select the entire audio file
Threshold = -18db
Noise Floor = -40db
Ratio = 2.5:1
Attack Time = 1.81 secs
Release Time = 11.1 sec 

This article give more settings for Using Chris’s Dynamic Compressor. Honestly you can spend all of your time trying various downloads and settings while not getting a single recording done and submitted. Chris’s might be overkill for now. 

Audacity Built-In Noise Reduction  

  •  For voiceover, changing the default settings to: 
  • Always leave some silent leadin and tailout for matching room ambiance  and getting a noise reduction sample
  • Noise reduction(dB) = 6 This setting controls how many dB’s Audacity will reduce your noise by.
  • Sensitivity = 6.0 (default)
    This setting tells Audacity how aggressively to remove the noise,
  • Frequency smoothing (bands) = 6
  •  "Reduce": Select this option to filter out the noise from the selection.

Another Point of View on Audacity Noise Reduction Settings

.30 dB is a good place to start. If in a quiet recording environment,  15 dB . If you need more, undo the first pass and try 35 or 40 dB.  Keep this number as low as possible. A high setting will cause Audacity to reduce non-noise sounds, which is called overprocessing..  

Sensitivity (dB) start at 4.00 dB and adjust as necessary. Keep it as low as possible.
  again at the risk of removing desired audio. Keep this number as low as possible.  You may have to go as high as 10 dB. If you're going higher than 2 dB, try working closer to your microphonefor a better signal to noise ratio. 

 Frequency smoothing   

The default setting is setting is 3, settings lower than this tend to favor music and higher settings tend to favor spoken word.

Noise: Frequency smoothing reduces artifacts resulting from noise reduction on low bitrate mp3s. If you hear these artifacts in your file, 

De-Essing: 

This is done at the end because after other processing it may not be needed. You need to listen to the entire recording with a critical ear. Also listen to mouth plosives, popping sounds which you can reduce by selecting that piece if waveform and reducing the volume.

Free De-Essing Audacity Plugin Downloads (possible overkill)









SPITFISH is a relatively easy to use de-esser, . Just like classic analog de-essers, this unit dynamically filters out harsh, annoying s-like sounds that would otherwise 'spit' in your face.    

DOWNLOAD FREE PLUGIN  “the fish fillets” contains the “Spitfish De-esser  with a compressor and noise gate plugins, but they are are used for music tracks and are a little heavy handed for processing for crystal clear speaking voice.(the compressor and noise gate)

NORMALIZE: Start by normalising for the loudest peak to be around ‑1dB . If you use a compressor,you can add gain there.

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