Lots of good advice here. I do not like Audacity's Noise Reduction in general. If it's used lightly it can be ok, but if you need a lot of noise reduction, it really harms the sound quality.

So first reduce the noise generated by your gear (expensive). Then reduce the noise heard by your gear (inexpensive). Then use as little noise reduction as possible.

I have had much better experience with Audition's noise reduction but I've left Adobe on non technical principals and can't recomend, but it suggests there may be other better plugins out there to explore.

Try running a real time EQ plugin. Use a super narrow bandwidth with the level boosted fairly high. Start at one end of the frequency spectrum and slowly sweep the bandwidth to the opposite end of the spectrum. Listen for areas where the offensive sounds/background noise seems to get louder. Once you find the worst area, turn the boost way down. This isn't a great method to rely on, but in certain situations it can be helpful.

I don't know if this will help with your specific problem and I'm sure I'm not explaining it properly, but if you want to look into it try searching YouTube for videos on "EQ sweeping" or "Seek and Destroy EQ technique".

The main thing you have to do is find and remove the sources of noise.

Treat the room, even if you have to use couch cushions, mattresses and moving blankets. Or move your mic into a more sound isolated space, like a closet full of clothes in the center of the house.

This is assuming your mic and interface are of good enough quality that they're not introducing noise. If that's not the case, replace them with something better.

Once you do those two things you'll be able to use much less aggressive noise reduction settings and it won't alter the sound of your voice nearly as much.

Noise reduction is a destructive process. So less is more.

The best place to invest time and money is to learn how to fix your audio before you even hit the record button.

That means identifying sources of noise and figuring out what you can do to reduce or eliminate them. Another thing that beginners miss is how to treat your recording space with “broadband” sound absorption. I like to say that I’d rather use $100 mic in a properly treated room than a $5000 mic in a closet.

If your recording is good, then you don’t have to do much post production at all.

That being said, Izotope RX has a bunch of great audio restoration tools for cleaning up your audio.

Supertone Clear is a nice plugin for eliminating general background noise.

Accentize has a bunch of noise and reverb removal plugins for professionals. They are used in TV and Film a lot.

With any kind of noise reduction I would do a little at a time. If I wanted to reduce noise by 12 db. I would do 3 passes of 4 db instead of one at 12 db.

I've recently started using audacity with a Sennheiser profile USB mic and a pretty quiet room to record audio narrations up to an hour long per session. My workflow is :

1. Noise reduction (not too much, sample a few seconds of "silent" recording first and then apply only once)

2. EQ. This one takes a bit of trial and error as every persons voice is different so you might have to just see what sounds best.

3. Normalise (I just use the default level of -1db)

4. I then apply noise gate and then listen through and remove any clicks or pops. This takes the longest amount of time.

5. Final step before exporting, I do Loudness Normalisation to -16db to -19db depending on thr recording itself.

Its quite a few steps but thats what I find yields me the best results.

But also if anybody else has any feedback or tips on my workflow that would be great.

Hey! Don't know about audacity as I'm using reaper (which I suggest you to try it btw). Every DAW is different but at the same time concepts are the same. As an audio engineer myself I could say Post production can be a bit overwhelming though. I'd suggest learning basics first (leveling, pan, static mix, etc)

There's still a lot you can do with editing in Audacity (it has the best editor there is). Don't worry about the 'bells and whistles' like EQ and noise reduction; start with

'topping and tailing' - you often want to get rid of the beginning and the end of what you've recorded. Do this by

- clicking near the beginning, close to where you think you want your edited audio to start

- place the cursor - without clicking - to the left of where you've clicked. Then press the B button on your keyboard; this will play the audio up to where you've clicked earlier. Then place the cursor - without clicking - to the right of where you've clicked, and press the B button on your keyboard. This will play the audio from where you clicked earlier, and effectively previews the edit. If you're happy, go to the 'select' menu, select 'region', then 'track start to cursor', and use the scissors to make the edit. If you're not happy, click again in the audio where you think you might want your edited audio to start, and repeat. You do something similar at the end of the audio, except this time you use 'select' - 'region - 'cursor to track end'

Let me know when this works for you.

What specifically are you trying to do? It's better to focus on just one particular thing, instead of trying to "learn all of Audacity". As far as starting a podcast, just record the content now and worry about figuring out the editing stuff later.

Check out this YouTube playlist, which covers all the basics of Audacity and more. You can skip a few videos which focus on music more than podcasting: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZWGTnpapial7S0qIRzJCoGTpky_DBIzx

I use audacity and I hate it. Don't be afraid to google each step.

"How do I connect a microphone to audacity"

"How do I see if audacity is recording?"

"Should I use stereo or mono tracks in audacity?"

Literally just google everything. Its a massive learning curve at first and it takes a long tedious time but once you get it you'll get faster.

Word of advice when you do finally master the basics. Record and edit sounds and etc in seperate projects -so background music in one, recording in another, interviews in another - and then export them separately when they're done, and mash them into a new final project. Audacity remembers each tiny edit you make per project. So if you clip and cut and paste on the same open window for hours, it will eventually slow down so much it will corrupt your file and you won't be able to even open it.

Audacity is free and good to get started but it's also absolutely garbage software. Good luck!

I linked to a BuzzSprout tutorial a few weeks ago.

https://old.reddit.com/r/podcasting/comments/cuia3y/how_to_edit_a_podcast_in_audacity_2019/

!

Here's a quick tutorial on Audacity https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAGCBO2bIcw&t=7s

It's got the basic structure as well. I hope it's useful!

Is it something in particular that you’re struggling with? Or is it just general Audacity advice that you’re after?

This is what you need. So many step by step guides. Login and enjoy free - Link

the most important part will be the eq.

but the eq will have to be specific to both the individual voice and the mic used.

play around with a graphic eq setting until it sounds the best, then save it as a preset for any future use of that voice and mic combo.

have you tried using a noise gate?

in general, the first thing you want to do is remove what you don't want (noise removal, noise gate, de-hiss, etc.), followed by eq (if the eq that sounds best results in clipping from boosted frequencies, turn the whole thing down before applying the eq to give you enough head room), then any limiting / compression.

normalising should be used after eq / before limiting & compression, and also used at the very end again if needed.

i probably wouldn't compress, or if i did it would be the very last step before normalising. limiter usually works better than compressing, and i'd use a soft limit with a lower value, something closer to -8 maybe? but it's all relative to the audio you are working on, there is no one size fits all. you just want whatever setting results in the peaks being reduced so they are in line with the majority of the rest of the waveform.

mic technique and recording settings can make a difference too, in general speaking as close as possible (within an inch) to the mic will improve the result. making sure the gain is as high as possible without any clipping, this will reduce background noises and make the noise floor less audible. you want to use something that can act as a windsock though to reduce breathy noises and overly percussive sounds. even rolled up socks and clothing covering the mic will work, but will often result in a more muffled sound with high frequencies reduced. you can counter this somewhat with a good eq afterwards, only trial and error will tell if you get the right balance between windsock effect vs high frequency loss.

Pitch adjust

Also, This could help you much:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Q1WFmOF1Uc

VoiceOverMaster, Josh has a Curve EQ txt that he created Just for Male VO using Audacity. It may be exactly what you are looking for, and it is a free download on this 1 1/2 hour long Audacity tutorial, simply the best....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVOdwrDu76A

I started using when my work moved into podcasting. The assumption was that as I was the youngest, I'd be able to figure out the damn computery bits quicker.

Came to it with zero experience, and ended up getting fairly proficient over the years although I've never used it to edit music. None of that's due to any inherent skill on my part, but I found Audacity pretty ease to use and would definitely recommend.

It's free anyway so you might as well give it a go

Mostly, video editing apps have rudimentary audio capabilities, and audio apps do strictly audio only. If you need indepth audio editing, audacity is far and away the best free option; the easiest to use may be WavePad, which I think is about $50.

If you mostly need video work, and just minor audio tweaks like fading in and out,probably the easiest to learn is OpenShot, which is free. It's not the most powerful option out there, but it's quick to learn and may be all you need.

camtasia studio gives you a nice tool box for video and audio. the audio is pretty limited but there are tutorials for separating the audio and video and editing the audio separately.

I use audacity for voice-over narration and recently tried out reaper. I switched back to audacity. I have the workflow down and the simplicity of it is appealing.

If you are working with spoken-word audio and video, you may want to look at Sonix: https://sonix.ai. You can upload a audio & video file and Sonix will automatically transcribe it. Then you can edit the audio and video simply by editing the text. If you strike out text, this will delete the underlying audio & video.

Audacity is not going to help you with video. But for audio, it is very comprehensive (it is a destructive editor though) but I like it.

How exactly do you edit audio without stopping the audio? It's an impossibility.

I know ctrl L will silence a highlighted section. I pause with space bar, highlight, ctrl l, arrow key to clear the highlight, then space bar again. I've gotten it down to a pretty quick reflex.

Not sure how many you have done but I find that with practice, it gets easier...my eye is trained to the right of my screen so I can visually see a gasp coming up and I know I need to stop. Meanwhile, my ears are listening.

For gasps, uhms, ahhs, wells, etc, you (and guests) will have very well defined patterns and they will be consistent so you can visually see them.

For me my gasp starts out small builds up and then cuts off really fast. I go in and take out the "hump" and then the remnants sound very natural.

Practice is my best advice.

Highlight what you want to edit while playing it back...then stop go back and edit.....PS editing while playing it..not in audacity

compressor EQ and limiter

Theres a pretty good Google doc that gives a general tutorial (+ links to required FREE extensions) on how to get your audio to sound nice post-recording but it leans towards a more bass-ier voice, so take it for what you will.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fmS0Wp6EantjSmQiBnPWyCCOSNpiawjgCOdUJknKbnE/edit?usp=drivesdk

After I've done all the narration, I make sure to go through the following editing.

Noise Cancellation (Absolute MUST to have decent quality)

Equalization (look on youtube for walkthroughs of which settings give you a good EQ curve for voice)

Normalization

Compression

Then re-do the Normalization.

Quality comes out much better than the raw recording before edits.

1. Get a mic that is not the Blue Yeti (I love the Rode Podmic USB)
2. Get it about three finger widths from you and point it at the corner of your mouth.
3. Have a windscreen/pop filter
   Check out Mike's Video https://youtu.be/WsmMMKRZp5g?si=dUsIEp7HjXEkvOOi

Moderator Required full disclosure: I am the head of Podcasting at Podpage and the founder of the School of Podcasting.

Define "professional". If you are talking about why your voice doesn't sound like you THOUGHT it should sound, no.

That is just what you sound like. We all went through it.

Audacity for PC users is well supported in the Reddit and all over the place. Get a work flow and a step by step list from Chat GPT and get in there and do some test work.

OK, thanks everyone. I’m on a Mac and it seems like GarageBand might be the easiest. I do have music at the beginning and end of the cast to splice in.

If you don't have a guest and its just solo, you can record directly into your editing software in the future

I use Garageband, and it is pretty straightforward. You just have to be using a Mac.

If you’re just trying to add intro/outro music, you might want to check out Shanda.

https://www.shanda.studio/

It’s designed specifically for podcasters who want something intuitive and fast. You just upload your audio + music once, and it automatically adds your intro/outro