Windows Freeware Guide: Remove Noise from Audio with Audacity Free on Windows 11

Noise in this post means unwanted sound in recording such as fan noise.

The test steps – Audacity 3.6.4

On: Windows 11 Home

Download: https://www.audacityteam.org/

1. Download it from the link above, then install it.

Open it, then go to menu ‘Edit’ > ‘Preferences’ to install FFmpeg.

At the left pane, click ‘Libraries’.

I had ‘FFmpeg’ installed, you can see the version from the picture above. If you want to install or update to the new version, click ‘Download’ button.

The webpage will show, click a link in blue font ‘Installing FFmpeg’.

The new webpage will show, there is the instructions, read it then download the installer from the link in step 1.

The new webpage will show, click a link for Windows, I selected 64-bit Windows.

After downloading is done, open ‘Downloads’ folder, then open the downloaded file. Follow the on-screen instruction to install it.

I encountered an error, I clicked ‘Try again’.

Everything was fine. The new version of FFmpeg was installed on my machine.

You can see in the picture above, version is changed.

2. Open Audacity, I dropped .m4a file to Audacity’s window.

Drag to select a part of noise.

Click menu ‘Effect’ > ‘Noise Reduction…’.

At step 1, click ‘Get Noise Profile’.

Click the area in the picture below to select a track.

Click menu ‘Effect’ > ‘Noise Reduction…’.

At step 2, select ‘Reduce’ then click ‘OK’.

You can see in the picture above, the wave form is lower.

Select the track, click menu ‘Effect’ > ‘Noise Gate…’.

The new window shows, at ‘Select Function’, choose ‘Analyze Noise Level.

The message shows, check the value at ‘Suggested Threshold Setting’.

Select the track, click menu ‘Effect’ > ‘Noise Gate…’. At ‘Select Function’, choose ‘Gate’. Fill Suggested Threshold in the box of ‘Gate threshold’ then click ‘Apply’.