How to install Noise Gate plugin?
Audacity does not have a built-in noise gate. Hence, you will have to download and install it.
How to Create a Robot Voice in Audacity. Want a different type of voice? How about a robot? Like the demonic voice effect, this can be done in just a couple of minutes with Audacity. Begin with a phrase you wish to robotize and duplicate it once with Ctrl+D. Then: Select the second track Open Effects Echo. Professionally record and edit Voice-Overs using Audacity – take your sound from good to Awesome! EQ, Compression, Gating, Room Tone, Mixing, Mastering. Breath removal and noise removal. Making audio sound fuller and 'delicious' with EQ techniques.
- Download Nyquist Noise Gater plug-in (noisegate.ny) following this link: https://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Nyquist_Effect_Plug-ins#Noise_Gate. It will take you to the download page.
- Once you download Noisegate.ny file copy-paste it to C:Program Files (x86)AudacityPlug-Ins
- Once Noisegate.ny file is in the correct folder, open Audacity.
- Go to Tools -> Add / Remove Plug-ins
- Find Noise Gate plug-in (noisegate.ny), select it and click enable, then click OK.
You now have noise gate plug-in installed and can use it from Effect menu.
How to use Noise Gate?
Measuring Room Tone
Before starting to work with Audacity Noise Gate (Noisegate.ny) you should measure your room tone. Knowing your room tone will help to set the correct threshold and level reduction.
To measure your room tone, simply press the record button and look at recording levels. The blue line on recording levels will inform you about what is the peak volume in your room. In the example below, it is somewhere around -39dB.
This information will help you to set a correct Gate Threshold later as you want to cut out unnecessary room noise without accidentally affecting vocals.
How to set Noise Gate settings?
Your default Noise Gate settings will probably look like this:
Low-Cut filter
Should you apply Low-Cut filter? It is not necessary because you can do the same using Equalizer and have more options.
Low-Cut filter allows to cut off frequencies below 10Hz or 20Hz which removes some unwanted noise.
If you are doing voice-over, you should be using EQ to remove anything below 60Hz anyway because the human voice doesn't go below 60Hz, and anything below this frequency threshold is noise. In the end, Low-Cut filter won't matter much, you might as well use it.
Gate frequencies above
You should leave this setting untouched. Leaving it at 0 will disable this setting and you should do just that. Gate frequencies above as name suggests cuts all the frequencies above a set threshold.
Audacity allows maximum value at 10kHz, making this setting almost unusable. Human voice may go as high as 20kHz, cutting major part of voice frequencies will render your audio useless.
According to Audacity Gate frequencies above parameter is used to reduce tape hiss which consists of higher frequencies. Considering you are unlikely to be using tape in this day and age it has become an artifact in the voice-over industry.
Level reduction
Level reduction is a very important setting for noise gate effect. It determines how much noise gate will reduce audio volume.
You can go from -100dB to 0dB on Audacity. In other DAWs you usually have an option to reduce volume by -inf which means you essentially mute it. Pokemon on phone. Audacity is limited in these settings, but choosing -100dB or -infinity will most likely make no difference.
You may be tempted to insert -100dB value if you don't want any background noise in your recording. However, that would sound unnatural.
Consider that noise gate does not clean background noise from parts of your audio where you talk. Completely removing background noise in between words will make your audio sound choppy.
If you do so, you will hear noise when the audio volume is above the set threshold, but audio will completely mute in between words making this unpleasant choppy effect.
Therefore, it is preferable to don't remove background noise completely. Audacity, by default, leaves it at -12dB. -10dB to -20dB is a good range for level reduction. It will leave some of the room tones and make your recording sound natural yet much cleaner. What is imovie.
Gate Threshold
Gate threshold is another key setting. It sets a threshold below which audio is toned down. For example, setting Gate threshold at -40dB with Level reduction of -15dB will decrease audio volume by 15dB for any sound that is below -40dB.
A correct gate threshold value will be different in every environment. Before determining gate threshold you should measure your room tone which we already talked about earlier. When you have your room tone and you know where it peaks determining gate threshold will be easy.
It is best to have gate threshold a tad bit higher than room tone. Room tone peaking at -40dB would require a gate threshold of at least -38dB. By selecting a higher gate threshold you make sure no unnecessary sound will be skipped by noise gate and allowed in your final recording.
However, setting gate threshold too high may cut out some of your voice, especially if you have a quiet recording. Hence, don't overdo it. I wouldn't try setting gate threshold any higher than -30dB.
Audacity Voice Over Effects After Effects
Attack/Decay
Attack/Decay is another important setting in Noise gate. You will find it a bit disappointing on Audacity as it doesn't offer dedicated setting for Attack and Decay. Meaning that your Attack will be the same as Decay. This is a bit of a deal-breaker because normally you would not be setting Attack the same as Decay.
In noise gate Attack determines how fast gates open. Having it set at 100ms means it will take 100ms to open noise gate after audio volume goes above the set gate threshold. In other words, it works as a fade-in.
Audacity Voice Over Effects On The Body
Noise gate will start to work immediately, but rather than instantly allowing sound to come through it is going to be a gradual process for 100ms at the end of which noise gate will stop working fully.
Setting higher Attack makes your audio sound a bit more natural because it allows a minor fade-in and you can't sense it easily. Abrupt noise gate will sound unnatural, however.
Still, Audacity allows a minimum Attack/Decay of 10ms which is high. Most DAWs allow to set Attack separately of Decay and allow to go as low as 0ms. An ideal Attack for voice over is somewhere around 1-3ms which is below what you can achieve with Audacity.
Usually, I would be setting Attack at 10ms with Audacity because that's as low as you can get, but because the same effect determines Decay you have to consider higher values. Setting Attack too high may cut out some of your wanted sounds.
Decay (on other DAWs it is more commonly called Release) determines how fast noise gate fades out. For example, if you have gate threshold set at -40dB and Decay at 100ms, once audio goes below -40dB it will take 100ms for noise gate to fully apply.
During this 100ms noise gate will gradually decrease audio levels until at the end of 100ms noise gate will be fully applied and audio levels will be reduced by what you have set at Level reduction.
Usually, I would have Decay Starcraft 2 expansion 3. set at somewhere around 100ms to 200ms. Having some Decay prevents noise gate from cutting wanted sounds. At the end of sentences, your voice may be at a lower level, hence setting Decay at low value would result in unfinished words. You want some Decay time to prevent unnatural cuts.
Also, Audacity Noise gate doesn't have Hold setting. Hold works similar to Decay, but it is not a gradual process as it is with Decay.
Now you can see why having Attack and Decay at the same value is such a bad option. Setting Attack too high can result in sentences missing the first few letters. On the other hand, setting Decay too low may result in abrupt cuts at the end of sentences.
With Audacity not offering Attack and Decay as separate parameters, I would set Attack/Decay somewhere in the middle of 100 to 150ms. It is not going to be perfect, at it will be too high as Attack and too low as Decay but there is no better option. You can play around to see what works the best for you.
Save Preset
This is a very useful option. Once you have your Noise Gate settings optimized you can press Manage button and then Save Preset to save your settings so you don't have to remember them later and go through the whole process over again.
Conclusion
Noise gate is an effect that enables you to reduce or cut out all audio that is below a set threshold volume.
The effect is especially useful when you have long voice recordings such as podcasts or book narrations. Without noise gate, you would have to manually remove any noise in between your words.
On the other hand, noise gate can't fully replace manual labor. You can tweak noise gate settings all you want, but removing noise by manually deleting is probably gonna give you better results.
That is why when dealing with short voice-overs such as commercials you might be better not using noise gate. It is when you have long recordings noise gate comes useful because manually removing noise will give you diminishing returns.
KillaDays
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I thought I would make this tutorial for anyone else that uses audacity to edit their audio when there is a problem with the audio. This tutorial is focused on getting rid of harsh sounding 'p' and 'b' sounds. All you need is your audio recording and audacity. Here's an example of some pretty shoddy audio that needs to be fixed:
(This is just so you can get an idea of what the plosives sound like)
Keep in mind that these noises are also easily preventable! You can prevent them by getting a popscreen, a windscreen, and angle the mic further away from your face (you might notice the mic is angled right at my mouth, I shouldn't have done that as it made the audio quite a bit harsher.). I made a DIY pop-screen out of a wire coat hanger and dollar store leggings. I wouldn't recommend buying one as they are usually quite a bit of money and aren't worth the price when they are so easy to make.
This tutorial is for people that realize the audio wasn't very good until after they recorded it (like me) but still want to use the footage.
So, on to the tutorial:
You are going to want to open up audacity with your project.
From there you are going to want to click on the 'Effect' tab shown at the very top of the screen.
From Effect, you want to go to Equalizer:
When you open it, it should be flat, or it should look like this:
If it doesn't look like that, simply press the Flatten button as highlighted blue in the above picture.
Now, this is where you are going to begin to make the fix for the sound. Starting at 160 Hz, you want to gradually slide the sliders down so it makes a gentle curve until the last four sliders (40Hz-20Hz). The last four sliders you want to leave them at the very bottom of the sliders. So, in all, it should look like this when you are done:
Next, you are going to want to save this. You are going to click 'Save/Manage Curves'. This screen will pop up:
Click Rename, name it what you want and then click 'ok'. As you can see, above the 'unnamed' equalizer, is the custom 'P' Fix. That's my plosive fix and it's basically what I showed you in the last image.
Now after this point, it's an easy ride from here on out.
Plosives, or the harsh 'b' and 'p' sounds have a certain look about them. After the first few fixes you should be able to spot them easily. They look similar to this:
As you can see, I have it selected. Use the select tool and select the plosives, then go up to effects, click equalizer, MAKE SURE it's on the one that you just made (with the curve, in my case, 'P Fix') and then click OK. After using the equalizer it will look like this:
Quite a drastic difference. Now you just rinse and repeat for the rest of the audio track, selecting the plosive problem areas and then you can click CTRL+R to quickly shortcut to what you just did.
I hope this helps anyone who is having troubles with harsh sounds in their audio. If you have any questions feel free to ask and I will help to the best of my ability
