Bettering the sound of a webcam recording - is it possible?

Question

hopefully this is the right place to ask.

I'm working on a project, and I filmed myself playing the piano with my webcam. Now I don't need any grade A sound here, it's ok that's it's kinda grainy and low quality. But the problem is I accidentally set the computer's microphone sensitivity too high, and the sound is just terrible, there's a lot of noise even before I start playing, and the piano itself sounds extremely enhanced to the point that it doesn't sound like anything

Another problem is - I have a deadline. I don't know If I'll get to record another session before I have to finish the project. I have to know - is there's a way to improve the sound quality (I already extracted the sound), or would trying to do that be a waste of time?

Thanks in advance

p.s.

I'm running Ubuntu, so free software is better. But I have Windows on a VM as well, if I ever need it.

Answer 1

Sound is crap in/crap out. If it sounds bad to start, there is only so much you can do to improve it. Most likely, if the gain was too high, then you have major clipping on your audio and there will be nothing you can do to make it usable without having software completely make up whatever might have been there which isn't going to sound realistic at all. Your only real option is to re-shoot.