Audio Processors and Plosives

[Leo]

Which of the several audio effects editors should I use to smooth out plosives in a recorded vocal track. You know...those horrific "P"s and such.

Much oblidged!

[Studio615]

There is really nothing that will totally get rid of them and make it a great take. I have found that you can really get rid of them with mic placement. One trick is to set the condenser slightly higher than the vocalist's nose out in front of them, with it at the same angle as the vocalist's nose. The condenser should be upside down with the diaphram of the mic pointed directly at the bottom of the vocalist's neck and top of the chest area. Then put the popscreen in front of the vocalist's mouth and if need be, put a dummy mic in front of them to keep them from looking up. This will get rid of the plosives, and also get rid of nasally sounding crap. Play around with it. As far as the take you've got, try parametric eq, limiting, and de-essing the track. Good luck and take my recommendations with a grain of salt. I am a semi-pro at best, but I recorded at a pro studio recently and the producer/engineer who is a friend of mine told me he does it this way to eliminate the problems. I was amazed at how good it sounded. It worked like a charm and he didn't need to fix a single thing on that vocal track.

[Archer]

When plosives affect the low frequencies, some apply a hipass filter. Band specific compressors, either multiband or splitband are used too. Still, consider the fact that even though compression might be applied, for a few millisecond the waveform is distorted/digitally clipped and it is not possible to remove the damage, only it is to limit it. And sometimes the cure is worse than the sickness.
Some engineers even redraw the waveform data to "iron out" the plosive. Proceed with caution when doing so.

As you can see, the goal is to avoid this type of artifacts. Pop screens and the setup suggested by Studio 615 are a good example on how to achieve this.

<small>[ July 19, 2005, 08:14 AM: Message edited by: Archer ]</small>

[stephentayler]

I often highlight the offending pop and apply a highpass filter from the audio plugins menu, so as to just effect the offensive moment. It can then be crossfaded back to the normal soundbite. Alternatively, automating a filter can be good too. I also use these methods for offending sibilance. It is a bit labour intensive, but will yield results more natural than any automatic method

Stephen

[mastermix]

You can control plosives at their vocal sources by using mic pop or screen shields.

Kris..

[Rush909]

Originally posted by mastermix:
You can control plosives at their vocal sources by using mic pop or screen shields.

Kris..

just to add Kris... that you gotta make sure that your POP screen is large enough to handle the kind of microphone you are using... I remeber running into plosives problems after I upgraded form a AKGC1000 to a larger Mic (an AT4050) and did not figure it out until I realize that the pop screen I was using was too small and the low frequencies were getting "around" my poper stopper... once I put in a large poper my problems were gone...

I never have plosives in my takes when using a pop screen...

r.

[duncan]

The three band MW compressor that comes with DP can help if you compress the low band and leave the other 2 bands alone. You can also draw in a volume dip where the plosive is, which is probably not as good a fix as some of the above suggestions, but it's quick.

[philbrown]

My day gig is spoken word editing from live seminars, which I do in DP. I receive files I have no control over recording and some are loaded with popping P's. I high pass everything for starters, but for music you can automate a highpass on and off just for the pop or you can select and process the P with a highpass plug.

But mostly I manually use volume automation:
1. Activate volume automation on the track
2. Zoom way in till you clearly see the P
3. Ramp volume about 75-80% down but not all the way off (sounds more natural). I use ramps that are steeper than 45 degrees, but not not vertical, and take care to only drop the P and no surrounding audio. Works for me and I do a lot of it.

I do agree with using a pop filter to start with if you're doing the tracking. You can also sing across the mic in different ways or jsut under the mic if it's hanging down - depends on the singer. The very worst case is P's popping and hitting a compressor hard on the way in because you've got the P and then a volume reduction to make it stand out even more. "P's PumPing"

Phil

[builder]

A great trick for plosives is to place a pence in the center of the mic (LD) vertically with a rubber band around it. This make the air split on each side thus reduced those hard syllables.

Sorry if you already knew this..

Word