Help with cleaning an audio track.

[Totengräber]

I was wondering if it's possible to clean up an audio track that has a pretty significant amount of hiss. It's a track that was recorded back when I was in high school and it was done on a handheld voice recorder. Now I should start by saying it would be literally impossible for me to rerecord it as it was done by someone I haven't talked to in years and it was completely improvised with background noises from me and others that just can't be replicated with the same affect and feel.

Now the main problem with it is it caused quite a bit of distortion when he was talking into the mic pretty much the same as when you try to sing into a really low quality recording mic without a pop filter. The track is not bad all by itself but when I mix music behind it you can't understand what he's saying because of all the excess noise.

Is there any way to reduce the noise and maybe make what he's saying a little clearer? My audio editing software that I use is REAPER if that helps with suggestions.

 

[cobaltaudio]

Yes, there are ways to reduce hiss.
I've got a few tricks up my sleeve, as I've been doing audio restoration professionally for a while.
How long is the recording?
If you PM me, I'll give you my address and you can just email me the track if you like, via usendit or something and I'll do my best to fix it for you.
Have just come off the back of a huge spoken-word restoration project, so should just be able to copy it in and tweak some settings a bit, then send it back to you.

 

[Shadow_7]

Various cleaning software. The main issue is that when you remove noise, you remove parts of the audio, that you might have wanted to keep. Sox has pretty effective (destructive) noise removal. Audacity has some, the newer version, supposedly improves on that. Gnome wave cleaner in linux, and other options out there. It depends on the nature of the noise. And how forgiving the content is on being edited. The spoken word is pretty forgiving. musical content, not so much. I have a radio shack mic that has pretty high noise, but it's pretty editable. My usual mics have noise too, but editing it normally comes off as being destructive. To the point of having to mix it back with the original noisy track to balance out distortion versus noise. Just fiddle with it, until you have your goal, or convince yourself that it can't be done. Keep the unedited original(s) of course. Software might get better at the next upgrade.

 

[sjjohnston]

You can do some things pretty easily, which will remove noise and also make obvious (and probably unfavorable) changes in the audio you're trying to reveal. Most easy: just run it through a low pass filter. Slightly less easy, but only slightly more effective: run it through various cheap noise removal plug-ins and programs.

You can do some things that will remove noise and only minimally degrade the audio you're trying to reveal, but they generally require one or more (and ideally all) of the following: (a) more high-powered software, that's not cheap, (b) expertise on your part and (c) time.

 

[Totengräber]

@cobaltaudio I'll do that ASAP and thanks in advance for any and all help.

@Shadow like I said it's just someone talking into a really cheap mic which doesn't handle quick changes in the loudness of his voice very well so it causes a lot of pops and hisses. It's not really a big deal to me if it gets altered by the editing as long as you can still understand what he's saying.