Dereverberation
Reducing room echo already baked into a recording, so distant, bathroom-like speech sounds closer and drier.
See it
What it is
Dereverberation tries to separate the direct voice from the dense room reflections already baked into a recording, then turn those reflections down. It shortens the audible tail and pulls speech forward, but it is an estimate: the direct sound and the room occupy the same file, the same time, and many of the same frequencies.
Reach for it on dialogue recorded in a kitchen, office, hall, or other hard room when a pickup is impossible. Process only as far as needed for intelligibility, then follow with light EQ or noise reduction if the cleanup exposes rumble and hiss. iZotope RX's Dialogue De-reverb and Adobe Audition's DeReverb effect are the usual first stops. Several gentle passes can sound more natural than one extreme pass.
Gotcha: this is repair, not an undo button. Heavy reduction produces watery vowels, metallic chirps, and speech that fades in unnatural pieces. It also cannot recreate direct sound the microphone never captured. Moving the mic closer and treating the room before recording will always beat trying to remove the room later.
Ask AI for it
Reduce the recorded room echo in this dialogue with iZotope RX Dialogue De-reverb. Work from a clean copy, target roughly 3 to 6 dB of reverb reduction, and process the speech in short sections so changing rooms or mic positions do not share one setting. Preserve consonants and natural room continuity, stop before vowels turn watery or metallic, and loudness-match the before and after versions for an honest comparison.