How to Remove Unnecessary Audio with Audacity

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Trim out background noise, vocals, and other unnecessary audio with Audacity for Windows and macOS

Written by Cory Stillman

Last Updated: November 10, 2023 Fact Checked

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Removing Background Noise

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Cutting Sections

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Removing Vocals

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Q&A

This wikiHow guide teaches you how to remove unwanted audio in Audacity. There are a few different types of audio that you can remove, including sections of tracks, background noise, and vocals. Keep in mind that Audacity's vocal removal tool is rudimentary and cannot remove all vocals.

Things You Should Know

To quickly remove background noise in any track, use the Noise Reduction tool in the Effects menu.
If you want to remove an entire noisy section from a track, highlight the section with your mouse and press the Delete key.
To remove vocals from a music track, use the Vocal Remover effect.

Method 1

Method 1 of 3:

Removing Background Noise

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1
Select a background noise section of the track. Click and drag your mouse across a section of the track that contains only background noise if possible.
- If there isn't enough free track to do this, select the section with the most noticeable background noise.
This tab is at the top of the Audacity window (Windows) or the top of the screen (Mac). Doing so prompts a drop-down menu.

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It's near the middle of the Effect drop-down menu.
This button is at the top of the window. This will help Audacity determine what is background noise and what isn't.
You can also click the track and then press either Ctrl+A (Windows) or ⌘ Command+A (Mac) to select the whole track, which is ideal if you're working with a song.
It's at the top of the drop-down menu. This will apply the suggested noise reduction to the track.
7
Reduce the noise again if necessary. Repeat the noise removal process if there's still a noticeable amount of background noise. You may have to do this several times.
- You can raise the amount of background noise removed by clicking Noise Reduction... in the drop-down menu and then sliding the "Noise reduction" slider to the right.

Method 2

Method 2 of 3:

Cutting Sections

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Find a section you want to remove, then click and drag your mouse across it to highlight it.
2
Press Delete. This will immediately remove the section from Audacity.
- You can also click Edit and then click Delete in the drop-down menu.

Method 3

Method 3 of 3:

Removing Vocals

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1
Select the whole track. Click the audio track, then press either Ctrl+A (Windows) or ⌘ Command+A (Mac).
- This wikiHow guide can help you learn more about recording a full song in Audacity.
It's a tab at the top of the window (Windows) or screen (Mac).
You may have to click a downward-facing arrow at the bottom of the drop-down menu to find this option. Selecting it prompts a pop-out menu.
Click a link in the pop-out menu to the right of the drop-down menu. This will open the vocal remover window.
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Click OK. Doing so will remove some of the vocals from the track. While this isn't 100 percent reliable, you'll notice a significant difference in the result.
- You can perform this step multiple times to increase the percentage of vocals removed, though doing so may harm the recording's fidelity.

Community Q&A

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Question

How do I remove a section without moving the rest of the track? I'm trying to cut out an intro but I want everything after it to remain in the same place.

Community Answer

Instead of trying to delete the section, I would use the "Generate... Silence" feature and overwrite that part of the song with silence. That will prevent the shifting.

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Question

How do I delete laughter off of a song?

Community Answer

Laughter would be tricky. Your best bet is probably to use "Effect... Noise Reduction." You can then choose the best example of the sample noise possible (the laughter, with as little music in it as possible) and Audacity will do its best to filter the sound out.

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Question

How much time should I add between songs that I copied from a cassette tape to split them?

Community Answer

You only need to add a few seconds, but if you want to be specific you could look up the songs and match up to the official song duration.

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