Help fixing "screaming" in audio.

[Thread7]

I'm not sure the terminology to use here, but I have a web site where people submit YouTube videos of themselves singing. I edit the submissions down to 20 seconds and then repost them. The problem is that many of these "karaoke" type submissions are recorded on cheap web cams with very cheap microphones. The biggest problem I have is a "screaming" or "vibrating" type noise on my computer speakers when the singer sings loud or high notes. I've been playing with Audacity (I'd use anything else someone wants to recommend). I think the screaming isn't nearly as bad if your computer has a good set of speakers. But common cheap laptop speaker make it sound bad.

The best I can do is that it seems to get slightly better when I run a "low pass" filter. Any other filters or recommendations anyone could suggest?

[Thread7]

Oh I forgot, to put a link to some of the screaming examples - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tojgb7ls4dQ or this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcA3L7jpUJs
Remember if you have good speakers you probably won't hear the vibration. But I want to make this work for even the people with cheap speakers.

If anyone is interested the main web site is http://www.JustLetMeSing.com?r=vh

[redwudz]

Audacity should be able to help somewhat. It sounds like the microphone is just overloaded. You might try the high and low pass filters. It's a bit too late for an audio limiter, but you might try the hard limiter. I'd just play around with the settings and filters and see if you can get any improvements. But distortion like that is difficult to lessen.

It would be a lot easier for us if you just posted a representative audio clip, then we wouldn't have to try to pull it off the Youtube videos. Preferably off one of the original files. You can add it as an attachment to your post.

[Thread7]

Ok, thanks. I uploaded a short MP3 (called chelsea-taylor-swift-clip.mp3) that has a lot of the distortion. This is typical of the files that I get.

[jagabo]

You can try reducing the volume and applying the Clip Fix filter in Audacity. The closer you can get to the original recording the better. AAC or MP3 encoding make it harder to restore the clipped peaks. Otherwise about all you can do is apply a low pass filter to remove some of the harshness.

[lordsmurf]

Your audio is distorted.
Further analysis (with images) for this kind of issue at http://www.digitalFAQ.com/forum/showthread.php/filters-cracking-sounding-2073.html?p=11119#post11119

Using just Sound Forge and Goldwave, same techniques in above link, this is possible: