Vocal Nodes in recording

[Julia123]

I have a vocal recording where the vocalist has what I believe are nodes and there is a constant scratchy hiss in many takes of ahhs, ooos etc. It seems like it should be similar to other kinds of noise but my experimenting with RX 7 is getting me nowhere. I can't eq it out with much success either, yet it seems to stay very constant.

Has anyone here dealt with this or something similar and have any suggestions?

[MIDI Life Crisis]

I usually start with the Isotope RX 2 Denoiser. I'm not sure what the equivalent is in RX 7. I have both, but only the RX 2 has the Denoiser.. I see the RX7 vocal cleanup thing, but I doubt that's the same thing.

Ozone 9 might be helpful, as well as Hit and Mix's Infinity. No inexpensive solution. But even so, the trick is going to be to isolate the unwanted audio so it can be reduced. Surrounding frequencies may suffer.

The thing bout the denoiser I like is you can monitor brother the signal sans the noise, or just the noise. That can really help in nailing down the exact frequency. I usually have to back it off a little and compromise on a middle ground that keeps some noise so as to not impair the naturalness of the sound.

[mikehalloran]

Spectral De Noise is the RX 7 version the old DeNoise plugin from RX 2–4. You can ask it to learn the noise and go from there. The version in Advanced has greater functionality and is installed as a stand-alone plugin but the one in Standard is pretty good, too. Spectral is not found in Elements.

There is another plug called Voice DeNoise but it's not the same. Voice DeNoise is a godsend for mouth snaps and clicking that other plugs can't seem to touch. First time I used it on a child's voice (back when it was part of Advanced only), I thought it worth every penny I had paid but not that many singers need it IMO — perhaps yours might.

RX Elements contains Voice… but not Spectral… Here's a tutorial page — scroll down for the old comparison chart.
https://www.izotope.com/en/products/rx/features.html

If you purchased enough bundles, you might find yourself with licenses for Elements, Standard and Advanced. Whichever one you install last is the version that you'll find in your plugins list — as I found out when I accidentally installed Elements and discovered my Advanced plugins were missing. The stand-alone is affected, too. Reinstalling Advanced fixed that up. Ozone is the same way but Nectar is not.

[FMiguelez]

I would also try a multi band compressor. Zero-in the offending frequency range and set in such a way that it compresses a good amount when those noises happen. May not work at all, but worth a try.

DP´s multiband compressor is GREAT for this!

[Julia123]

Thanks for the suggestions. It did end up being too much of a sacrifice to tone it down after trying some of the above and more. I ended up adding another part behind the vocal where it was a problem to just mask it after all of that:-).

[Tritonemusic]

Thanks for the suggestions. It did end up being too much of a sacrifice to tone it down after trying some of the above and more. I ended up adding another part behind the vocal where it was a problem to just mask it after all of that:-).

Old-School technique, to the rescue!

[EMRR]

It doesn't help much now, but I've had a number of singers who generated a lot of that sort of thing, and the easiest fix is demoing as many different mics as possible to find the one that showcases it the least, while still sounding good on the voice. It's maybe only a wish-list thought, a reminder that fix-in-the-mix is always harder (but sometimes unavoidable), or an excuse to buy more microphone types!

[Julia123]

I will keep that in mind for next time definitely!