It is real pain to record a clear voice without any background in our noisy environment. You may notice crisp and clear voice recordings without any noise. You may wonder where they record this crisp and clear audio. You don’t want to go to Mount Everest to get a noise-free environment to get clear audio. There are also some audio recording studios having efficient noise sealings and microphones-equipped with advanced noise cancellation hardware. But it is not a wise idea to create a high-end audio recording studio only for just recording our voice. Then how to record our voice without background noise and disturbances.
You may hear about Audacity, a free audio editor. Before recording the actual voice record the room tone for 10 seconds. Room tone is nothing but a recording of the natural environment where you are recording your voice. Even you can’t hear any noise a sensitive microphone can pick up the noise of winds, fans, breathing sound, and all other environmental noise. This room tone will act as a baseline for removing the noise.
Download and install the Audacity software. Open Audacity software on your PC or laptop. Record your voice with a 10-second room tone or silence. Load the recorded voice in Audacity.
Step 1: Select the room tone or an area without your recording (silent part) in Audacity.
Step 2: Under the Effect menu, select Noise rEduction.
Step 3: Click the button Get noise profile. The box vanishes. Don’t worry, follow the steps.
Step 4: Now select the entire region of audio from which you want to remove background noise. In the menu go to Select then All to select all voice.
Step 5: In the Effect menu click the Repeat Noise Reduction (Ctrl+R).
In the Noise reduction box under Step 2, there are three settings that you can adjust the slider to change the values.
Noise reduction (dB): This controls the amount of volume reduction to be applied to the identified noise. If you are using the lowest value then the nose reduces to an acceptable level. Higher values may make the noise even quieter, but it may damage the voice.
Sensitivity: It controls how much of the audio will be considered as noise, on a scale of 0 (off) to 24 (maximum).
Frequency smoothing (bands): At values of 1 or higher, this control spreads the noise reduction into the specified number of neighboring bands. The default setting is 3, settings lower than this tend to favor music and higher settings tend to favor spoken word.
Below that, you can select two options, Reduce and Residue. Select Reduce to filter out the noise from the selection. Select Residue to hear the sound that would be filtered out.
You can see three command buttons there, Preview, OK, Cancel. Clicking Preview plays a short preview of the audio by applying the current setting without changing the original audio. The default preview length is 6 seconds, you can change it in Edit>Prefernce>Playback. Click the Ok button to apply the effect to the audio. The noise reduction will be applied to the audio file using the current settings. The Cancel button aborts the effect and leaves the audio unchanged.
To get crisp and clear audio you need a good condenser microphone. I purchased a Blue Snowball iCE condenser microphone and noticed that the voice output from the condenser microphone is sharper and crystal clear than an analog microphone and it has a wide frequency response that provides superb sound reproduction quality for high-resolution audio. Cardioid microphone records sound sources that are directly in front of the microphone, thus reducing the unwanted background noise. If you want high-quality audio you can get a USB streaming microphone, it comes with a desktop stand, shock mount, anti-wind foam cap, USB cable, and some with a pop filter. The USB microphone has a USB port to easily connect the microphone with your computer. There is no need to install any software and drivers separately. The cardioid polar pattern design of the mics reduces the pickup of sounds from the sides, improving the isolation of the desired sound source, making a clearer and more realistic sound. Pop filter reduces and eliminates popping and lisping from your recordings without diminishing clarity.
