Topic: editing out a voice with audacity?

[floete]

i was just using my edirol r-09 in an interview situation, just me and another person.  sadly, due to placement of the recorder, my voice shows up MUCH more loudly than the other voice, by about 2:1.  our voices are quite different, mine is higher, his is lower and more raspy, and i'm wondering if there isn't some tweak i can do with audacity to lower my voice down to an acceptable level.  possible?  thanks!

[Brian Skalinder]

If I understand correctly, you don't want to edit your voice out, i.e. remove it, just make them so they're more similar in volume.  You could apply an amplitude envelope to all the spots on the recording in which you speak, but that's going to require a -lot- of manual work.  So I'd probably try compression.  Compression will reduce the dynamic range, i.e. reduce the difference in loudness between your voice and the other.  Last I tried, though, Audacity's compressor didn't work...at all.  Perhaps it's fixed now, so try it.  But if it's not fixed, here's a bit of info on how to use a few of MDA's free plugins with Audacity.

[floete]

yup, brian, that's exactly right.  thanks for the suggestion.  i'll try it out!

[Brian Skalinder]

yup, brian, that's exactly right.  thanks for the suggestion.  i'll try it out!

Good luck!  BTW, I just tried Audacity's built-in compressor in v1.2.4 and it only sorta works.  If you can decipher my spreadsheet in the link provided, I think you'll have better control and results using the MDA plugin compressor.  You may find it here.