Hi Brittany
I agree with John, parametric equalizers are the best first step and one
can go further. After equalization (and you may have to do several
pasess at muliple frequencies) there's a number of commercial audio
editing pachages on the market. These include software from Sony, Adobe
and severqal others. All have noise reduction packages either
integrated into their software or as add-ons. What they do is sample a
moment or two of the background sound and subtract that sound from the
entire audio file. Usually this can be done as a percentage of the
total, suptract 20% of the total, for example. It's usually good
practice to use multiple incremetnal passess of noise reduction rather
than do it all at once.
Since this may not be anything you will immediately wish to invest in or
learn thouroughly, I suggest that if there's a communicaitons or music
department there are folks who live to do this stuff. They can help you
and will likely instruct at the same time.
This kind of equalization will not help transient sounds like nalgene
bottle opening. They are designed to address air conditioning hum,
traffic from a distant highway and other continuous sounds. They can
also do a little damage so critical listening to the final product
compared to the original is a must.
Good luck
Marc Myers
Primate Conservation, Inc.
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