Also, another tip would be not being so hung up on clearing up aaaaaall the noise.

Every time you gleefully run the "noise reduction" tool in Audacity, all it's really doing is summing up the frequencies it hears in your background noise sample and then applying that cut across the board.

This has the effect of cutting out stuff you want in places you wanted it, leading to the boxy, honky sound of something with too much mids.

What, you want an example? Sure, I can do that.

Furthermore, an absolutely 100% clean and dead silence in gaps makes things sound sterile and clinical.