How to Reduce Background Noise While Recording (With Steps)

With people foraying into content creation at a large scale, making videos and editing them has really become a thing. While doing this, the one thing that annoys people is background noise. It hinders your audio and causes headaches while post-production, affecting your content, podcast, or voiceover work. Here you are looking for ways to reduce background noise while recording and get the best possible sound quality for your videos. 

There are a lot of things affecting the sound quality, and there should be a striking balance between the speech-to-noise ratio to get better sound quality. In this post, we will decode the reasons, solutions, and tips to record audio without background noise for better audio quality.

Common Causes of Background Noise When Recording

While there are many factors that add up to the background noise, here are some of the common causes of background noises when recording. Additionally, you can work on them to improve the audio quality.

• Ambient Environment: Your physical surroundings, like street noise, fans, or appliances, will contribute to the background noise.
• Microphone Quality: A bad microphone will render the audio by not filtering out unwanted noise and results in a poor signal-to-noise ratio.
• Electronic Devices: All the devices like computers, mobiles, and other electronics transmit signals which might introduce interference and hum into the recording.
• Poor Acoustics: Rooms with bad soundproofing and acoustics cause reverberation, echoes, and noise reflections.
• External Sources: If you are recording outside, the factors like wind, trees, breeze, and traffic may introduce unwanted noise.

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2 Methods of Reducing Background Noise While Recording

To reduce background noise while recording, you can do two things, one is to use a professional voice recorder with noise cancellation like EaseUS RecExperts, and the other is to use real-time noise suppression software. Here's a table reflecting the effectiveness of both methods.

Method 1. Use a Professional Recorder

The best possible way to reduce background noise while recording is to use a professional recorder like EaseUS RecExperts. The tool contains AI-powered noise reduction features which automatically remove the background noise and help you maintain a good sound-to-noise ratio to produce audio of high quality. You can record both the desktop and microphone sounds in great sync.

The tool is available for both Windows and PC. This tool comes with an added advantage of a professional screen recorder and helps you easily extract audio for further editing. You can have a try now.

Step 1. Run EaseUS RecExperts, and click Record audio on the left panel. Next, choose the audio source you want to record, like System sound or microphone. 

Step 2. Click the down-arrow icon next to System Sound or Microphone, choose the Advanced options, and tick the Microphone boost and Microphone noise reduction options. Moreover, you can also adjust the volume.

Step 3. Once done, click REC to start your audio recording. 

Method 2. Use Real-Time Noise Suppression Software

Real-time noise suppression software can reduce background noise while recording. This software captures the audio, and with the help of an adaptive noise profile, they reduce the background noise while recording to improve audio quality. All of our phones, computers, voice, and video communication devices work on this software.

Audacity is an open-source software that comes with an inbuilt noise suppression tool, which cancels out the hums, sounds, buzz, and other unwanted background noise from your audio. Since this tool is a professional audio recording software, you can edit the audio in the app to finetune them.

How to reduce background noise while recording with Audacity:

Step 1. Download and open Audacity on your system. To select the Audio Host, Navigate to the toolbar > Edit > Preferences > Devices > Interface > Host and select from the drop-down. The Windows WASAPI is the recommended one.

Step 2. Click on Effect on the top and select Noise Reduction.

Step 3. In the Noise Reduction windows, click on Get Noise Profile. Record samples while raising the Noise Reduction meter to know the right value.

Step 4. Now, you can record your audio on the platform while the tool filters out the unwanted background noise. 

Step 5. Once done, click on the stop button. Go to the toolbar > File > Export > Export Audio and choose the desired format.

Pro Tips About Reducing Background Noise While Recording

While recording with no background noise is impossible due to many underlying factors around the surroundings, microphones, and the devices themselves. You can follow some simple tips to reduce background noise while recording.

1. Use a directional microphone

Directional microphones are a very popular choice for audio recording. These microphones are more sensitive in one direction; in other words, they are polar patterns rather than omnidirectional.

2. Reduce the subject-to-microphone distance and increase the microphone-to-noise distance.

This is the most effective way to improve the signal-to-noise ratio. Just like in live performances, how a singer holds the Microphone directly at/on their mouth. This criterion will overcome the other unwanted noise and captures the audio.

3. Remove background noise sources

If possible, try to avoid or remove acoustic noise sources around you, like an air-conditioning unit, fans, traffic noise, wind noise, etc. Not easy at all, but all of these will reduce the audio quality. Moreover, it is far easier to remove them beforehand than in post-production.

4. Use a high-pass (low-cut) filter at the microphone

To avoid pink-noise-like, which accounts for the major part of background noise, use a high-pass (low-cut) filter. A high-pass filter will cut the noise out since the pink noise's most energy is at a low frequency.

Reduce Background Noise While Recording FAQs

Here are some of the most frequent FAQs asked on reducing background noise while recording. If you have similar queries hope this will help you.

1. How do I stop my mic from picking up background noise?

The background noise while recording is inevitable, but here are a few things you can do to minimize your mic from picking background noise.

• Get close to the Microphone and speak
• Remove any electrical appliances like AC, fans, etc, which introduce noise
• Make sure you choose a room that's good enough
• Use pop filters to remove plosives
• Use a background noise reduction filter

2. Why does my mic pick up background noise better than my voice?

This happens in some situations while recording. If your Microphone is too far from your mouth or close to noisy sources. The other case is if you have multiple sound sources around you, they tend to introduce ambient noise.

3. How to Avoid Background Noise When Recording on Phone?

Here's what you can do to avoid background noise when recording on the phone.

• Choose a quiet place
• Use your headphones
• Place a sound-dampening case around your phone
• Adjust the sound sensitivity on your phone.