The primary goal of audio enhancement is to reduce noise in recordings. Noise is present in all recordings, even those made in very quiet environments. Noise is caused by the physical properties of the recording equipment and the surroundings. In most cases, it's the ambient noise that needs to be reduced. If the recording is made on a busy street, in a car, or in a noisy place, the noise will drown out the desired speech. Other types of noise can include noise from electrical devices such as mobile phones, air conditioners, or transformers. In some cases, wind noise or noise from the recording equipment can also be a problem. Often, multiple types of noise occur simultaneously.
While it's easy to remove the most common types of noise, noise reduction can be a complex task in some cases. Noise reduction software cannot always distinguish between useful sound and noise. For example, if there is speech on the TV in the background, the software cannot know whether it is the TV speech or the recorded speech that should be removed. While there is technology to solve this problem, it requires access to the noise that needs to be removed. For example, if there is music in the background, you can find the same music and give it to the software so it can remove it from the recording. However, it is often difficult to find the exact sound that needs to be removed.
The most important goal is to preserve as much of the useful sound as possible. This is not an easy task, and it requires professional equipment and expertise. The software must be very advanced and able to recognize speech. Only the most professional tools can do this.
Noise is constantly changing. A motorcycle drives by, a truck drives by, and then there are other sounds. The software must be able to follow these changes, and the expert must use the right tools to achieve the best result.
It is also often a problem that different speakers have very different volume levels. Some speak loudly, others speak very softly. It is possible to amplify weak sounds, but there are limits to what can be achieved. The quality of the recording limits how much you can amplify the sound without introducing too much noise. This can be compared to zooming in on a picture taken with a mobile phone camera. When you zoom in, the image becomes blurry. The same is true for sound. If you amplify the sound too much, it becomes distorted.
In most cases, we can make the recording much more intelligible by reducing noise and amplifying weak sounds.
(recording enhancement, audio cleanup, noise reduction, noise removal, audio repair, wind noise)