Lab: Record and Clean Your Voice in Audacity

Lab: Record and Clean Your Voice in Audacity

This lab walks you through making your first recording in Audacity and cleaning it up for export. Follow each step in order. Estimated time: 30 to 45 minutes for your first attempt.

Watch first: This walkthrough shows the full Audacity workflow - recording, noise reduction, trimming, fades, and export - in real time.

Before you start

• Download and install Audacity from audacityteam.org if you have not already.
• Have your story outline in front of you.
• Find a quiet room. A closet works well. Avoid kitchens and bathrooms.
• Use headphones while recording so you can hear your own voice clearly on playback.

Step 1: Set up Audacity

1. Open Audacity. Go to Edit - Preferences - Devices and confirm that the correct microphone is selected in the Recording dropdown.
2. Set the sample rate to 44100 Hz (the default) and channels to 1 (Mono) for voice narration.
3. Close Preferences.

Step 2: Record a test clip

1. Click the red Record button (or press R) and read your opening sentence.
2. Press the Stop button (spacebar).
3. Put on headphones and press spacebar to play back what you recorded.
4. Listen for: background hum or hiss, echo or reverb, clipping (distorted peaks), and your voice level (the waveform should reach roughly -12 dB to -6 dB but not touch 0 dB).
5. If anything sounds wrong, fix the environment or microphone position and re-record before doing your full take.

Step 3: Record your full narration

1. Press R to record. Pause for 2 seconds of silence, then begin speaking.
2. Speak from your outline, not a written script. Pause naturally between thoughts.
3. When you finish, pause for 2 seconds of silence, then press spacebar to stop.
4. If you make a mistake mid-recording, do not stop. Pause, take a breath, and repeat the sentence. You will cut the mistake out in editing.

Step 4: Remove background noise

1. Use the Selection tool (F1) to click and drag across a section of silence at the very beginning or end of your recording - about 1 second of room noise with no speech.
2. Go to Effect - Noise Reduction. Click Get Noise Profile. The dialog will close.
3. Press Ctrl+A to select the entire track.
4. Go to Effect - Noise Reduction again. Use the default settings (Noise reduction: 12, Sensitivity: 6, Frequency smoothing: 3) and click OK.
5. Play back a section and listen. The background hiss should be reduced without your voice sounding robotic. If it sounds unnatural, press Ctrl+Z to undo and try again with a lower Noise Reduction value (try 6 or 9).

Step 5: Trim silence and mistakes

1. Listen through your recording. When you hear a mistake or a long pause you want to remove, use the Selection tool to highlight that section.
2. Press the Delete key to remove it. The tracks on either side will snap together.
3. Repeat until you have removed all unwanted sections.

Step 6: Add fades

1. Select the first 0.5 seconds of your track. Go to Effect - Fades - Fade In.
2. Select the last 0.5 seconds of your track. Go to Effect - Fades - Fade Out.

Step 7: Export as MP3

1. Go to File - Export Audio.
2. Choose a save location and filename. Use a name with no spaces, such as my-story-narration.mp3.
3. Set Format to MP3 Files and Quality to 128 kbps (good enough for voice; higher is only needed for music).
4. Click Export. Fill in the metadata tags if prompted, or leave them blank and click OK.

Checkpoint: You should now have an MP3 file of your cleaned narration. Keep it - you will use it in the next lab when you add it to your video timeline in DaVinci Resolve.