My dear friend Jesse asked if I’d give him the deets on the “Noise Reduction” feature in Audacity, so I’m making a short post to outline the quick steps.

The main thing to remember is to leave a bit of dead space at the start of your recording. That way you have a sample of the background noise (fans, air conditioning, static, etc) you can use to allow Noise Reduction do it’s thing.

Select as large of a piece of that dead space as you can, and then pull down the “Effect” menu and pick “Noise Reduction”. Then choose “Get Noise Profile”.

After that step is done, just click anywhere in your recording to deselect the dead space and pull down the “Effect” menu to the “Noise Reduction” plugin again. This time, you’ll simply hit the “OK” button. When you do this, it will automatically select your entire recording – so don’t be alarmed. I use the default settings as shown in my example below, and they seem to work quite well.

After you’ve done that, your recording should be MUCH cleaner. It’s really simple, and it makes for a more professional sound. Hope it helps!