6

Last night I did live sound for a major awards event. I was working Front of House and there was this woman who came up to give a speech and she leaned into my MK41s at point blank range for the duration of her speech.

I'm now back home at my studio prettying up a replay mix.

Every T, K, CH, SH, B, F, H, basically any consonant which expels air when you say it popped my mics. And you know how a Schoeps sounds when it pops.

Unfortunately, they were so bad they made it into the house so my house ambience mics have the booms, too. I thought of ditching those mics for that person's speech and added a natural reverb plug-in, but I wanted to see if there was anything I can do to it otherwise.

Anyone got an easy way to eliminate these?

I'm going to try the Oxford Suppresser. Already going to roll it off at 100 Hz, possibly higher (luckily it's a female so her voice isn't effected too much).

I'd really like to save the editing time of filtering them out one by one.

Your assistance is greatly appreciated.

Thanks - Ryan

Improve this question

4 Answers 4

Reset to default
5

The Waves C1 should allow you to do what you're looking for. I believe it has a preset named De-Popper for specifically this solution. It allows you to compress just the lower frequencies that you'll be looking for. Also, RChannel has a similar, frequency selectable compression. Most of the de-essers I have don't allow you to select frequencies below 1k. Jay's suggestion of the C4 would definitely work too.

Improve this answer
0
4

I would try a multiband compressor, like the Waves C4. If used correctly it will compress only the frequencies you set, rather than the entire spectrum. You can also try a de-esser setup, but rather than a sensitivity around 3-6k it should be affecting 30-100Hz.

Improve this answer
1
  • 1
    There's Jay to the rescue again. Opposite-spectrum de-essing might just be the trick. Thanks!
    – Utopia
    Aug 30, 2010 at 3:02
3

A trick Roger Nichols taught us is to automate the volume to duck down right on the plosive, which ends up looking like a quick "V". He said that 9 times out of 10 he prefers to manually automate each and every pop and click before treating the whole thing with a plugin. I've used this trick on dialog and effects with great results. Good luck.

Improve this answer
4
  • Only thing is I'm going to have like 4 plug-ins on her which add quite a delay so to do such exact volume automation with that kind of delay on the track is annoying.
    – Utopia
    Aug 30, 2010 at 4:04
  • 1
    You can definitely go that route but it's going to take forever. Use plugins as much as possible, re-record to a new track, and then volume graph whatever plosives remain.
    – Jay Jennings
    Aug 30, 2010 at 15:09
  • The volume graphing does work well. But if you're going to go through the effort of drawing in volume graphs on each plosive, you might as well edit them too. For the time savings you're looking for I think @Jay has the best method here.
    – Steve Urban
    Aug 30, 2010 at 15:29
  • I agree that this fix can be anything but quick, especially on a project like Ryan described above, but I find it 1) avoids the risk of sounding over-processed from too much digital correction, and 2) keeps the dialog in the same atmosphere as other speakers/actors that didn't have a plosive problem. Either way, it's another useful tool to have available.
    – Matt Cavanaugh
    Aug 30, 2010 at 15:59
1

Waves has a plugin called W43 and a preset called "Wind" I usually drop the low slider down until the plosives are under control.

Improve this answer

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and cookie policy

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.