Working in Noisy Environment

That's tricky. I'm in an apartment with noisy neighbours and right next to a busy bus street that shakes the entire building. Plus I have an indoor garden beside me with fans and hydroponics stuff that's always making an annoying hum sound.

What I ended up doing was testing the GAIN on my microphone (I have a blue yeti) and making it quiet so it doesnt pick up very much beyond about 6-10ft away. It still picks up loud cars and about 20% of the bus sound going by and all my gardening sounds. But it's A LOT less.

But the problem I had then was really QUIET audio. So I put the audio into Audacity (or really any audio editing program) and applying a really good noise filter (noise filters/reducers in Camtasia/ScreenFlow/etc are not very good). Then I looked up some additional methods for making the sound louder without making it sound like I'm screaming and tweaked the audio with several additional filters. I'd tell you which ones but it's going to be different for everybody, unfortunately. It took about 3 days of exploring for me to figure out "my process" when editing audio.

After that I edit the audio directly. I listen to the entire lesson and cut out some of the filler words I use (and some of the funny Canadian things I say). Export it as a high quality mp3 or .wav, and in my video editing software I add a layer for the audio.

I still cant get rid of 100% of the noise, but it's VERY CLOSE. And only I can tell because I'm listening for it with good headphones.

This is a time-expensive process. If you can, limit your environmental sounds first. Otherwise software is the last resort and there's only so much we can do. But for me, it's worked out really well (aside from having to edit audio AND video now).

I have thought about it, but I live in a place that gets way too cold in winter to have it outside, and way too small indoors to have one.

I've noice proofed the room a bit with blankets but that's for internal sound.

I just recently bought a house so the idea is to use the basement as a recording studio. Hopefully that turns out well and the neighbours don't turn out to be partiers.

Others have mentioned digital soultions, but here's an organic one you can use, or comibe. You can make your own, really effective sound panels for really cheap.

You can get rockwool, or other insulation materials really cheap. If you're recording on camera as a talking head, you can place them just outside of frame. But even better if you're just doing voice narration - make a little box around the microphone to talk into.

Eliminates all the sound coming from the enviroment and also removes the hollow echo sound you might get recording in a larger room.

This is what I did, called a insulation fitter, got some left over packs of rockwool for $30. Built a little home stuido for recording. The voice quality is night and day.

Great tip. Thanks. I will try it

Try small room so it will reduce the echo and try to cover ur window and all exit points with soundproof material or Blacket.

1. First thing: don't use a Blue Yeti. It's a condenser microphone, which is great for using in a quiet environment, but condenser mics pick up loads of background noise. I used to use the Blue Snowball Ice - it seemed to pick up noises that even I couldn't hear! Get a dynamic, cardioid microphone instead. I use the Audio Technica ATR2100. These pick up less background noise and a cardioid mic generally picks up noise from in front of it.

2. You might also want to consider getting soundproofing foam panels and fitting them over your window frames. You should be able to attach them with tape to the window frames, as they are quite light. These might absorb some of the noise from outside, as a lot of it comes through the windows. (Not tried this myself, but it's been suggested to me).

3. Reduce the gain / input volume on your microphone. This will lower the volume of your voice, but also the volume of the dogs. Then you can run your recording through software to reduce background noise, then you can normalise the recording level so that your voice volume is boosted again. I use Auphonic for this, but I'm going to check out Krisp as well. You can also use Audacity - more time consuming though, but useful if the original recording is poor. I used to use the Noise Gate plug-in with Audacity, which removes noise below a certain decibel level. Very clever, but takes a bit of work to get right.

4. Instead of point 3, you could outsource your audio editing and get someone skilled at this to remove the dog / people noise.

Good luck!

@Gokul
, i have been sometime in that situation, recording some stuff in south east asia with full of free ranging dogs around outside barking at night, which I love, but is nt good for audio. I coped with that by "deleting background noice" in editing setting, and... making a recording space witha carton, with my head and the microphone inside, and a hole to see the scree of the computer... a bit cracy but, hey.. as creators we must be creative!

;-)

It's much better to work or study at night . There's little or no disturbance during night and if any ...your headphones can do the rest of job . I

prefer to work around 3-6am .

---

@Gokul
wrote:

Hello Instructors

I live in a very noisy environment. During the day, it's the people. During the night, it's the dogs. So, guys, how do you deal with the noise in your environment?

---