Removal of room reverb

Echo and reverb are very hard to eliminate since the frequencies of the sound you want to remove are the same frequencies that you want to keep.

You could try using a noise gate, but that often results in very choppy sound if not done properly. Or you could try this suggestion from Jim Cookman:

"There is actually one desperation method you can try, but it'll take a little experimentation. Set up a mike right in front of one of your monitor speakers. Hang a damp dish towel over the speaker and re-record your audio. If the towel is too thick or too wet, you'll get crap, but if you play around you can actually lose quite a bit of echo as the weaker signal will be damped down-- to coin"

Author: Jim Cookman Date: Jan 13, 2010 Location: Final Cut Studio"

-DH

This might not help in your set up as it depends on how it's recorded, so apologies in advance if this is a red herring.

However I'm often working on clips where the audio is recorded directly to camera, rather than via a mixer with a sound guy riding the levels. The result, in interviews, is that with both mics open, the mic where the person's not speaking at that point will be recording room noise/reverb and an off-mic version of the other speaker's voice.

Simply muting that track in FCP or the audio software will show if this is the case.

As pro cameras mostly default to recording 2 mono tracks, you can kill a lot of the background noise and reverb by using the audio mixer in FCP or adjusting the levels on the time line to take the non-speaker's mic down. It can be fiddly, but the improvement is often dramatic.

If the remaining audio levels for the 'live' mic are too low, you can cut and paste the good audio to the other track (or better still a new track) - pan them both to zero and you should hear a real difference.

It's not always best to take the spare mic levels right down, a bit of room coloration can help make the sound 'real', but that's down to personal choice.

This works with other noises, eg air con, as well as echoes.

An important caveat, though: this doesn't work on cameras or recorders that record both channels to a single stereo file, unless the device can be set to pan audio 100% L and 100% R and was set that way before the take.

Otherwise, you can use EQ, and noise gates/filters. No they are not perfect, yes they can work with care. Exporting to Soundtrack or another audio editor will give you more options.

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