Crackling noise on a vocal.. Help!!! :)

Timjuillet

New member
I recorded a vocal the other day, and I can't seem to get rid of a intermittent crack/pop noise. The girl who recorded her vocal was struggling a bit with making this clicking noise, because she has braces...

I've tried using the waves xnoise and znoise. I'm runing cubase, and have tried running a low shelf eq and high shelf eq. It's been good in a way, because I haven't actually looked at half of the mixing plugins I own. This has forced me to look at some of my other eq and compression plugs. But I'm still left with this clicking noise.

can any of you help me? I could email you the vocal if you are willing to give me some feedback on how to resolve it. I spent about 5 hours on it, and just can't seem to figure it out.

Thank you,

Tim Juillet
 
Without hearing it, I would throw a parametric EQ on the track that has the frequency of the click cut way down (6-12db) and automate the bypass so it is only in the signal path when the click happens. This could possibly effect the tone of the vocal, hence why I said to only engage the EQ when the pop strikes. This way you are ducking the click.

If that doesn't work and somebody else doesn't have another idea, You will need to re-track it. The singer needs to practice more. Remember crap in, crap out.
 
Well, the noise problems dependes on two conditions:

1 - When you were tracking it, something caused that noise and affected your recording (mic cable, microphone problems, interference wwith other equipments like a cellphone or so). If that happened, you'll have to figure out a way to scoop out a little bit of it using EQ in the right frequency (you can do that by boosting the frequency all the way up and then just hear where is the frequency that causes the noise to be amplified). I think in that case, is best for you to track the vocals again and make sure beforehand that you have no noise at all.

2 - You PC or Mac could be interfering with it...when you run out of RAM it can affect on your recordings as your DAW is running.

Hope it helps, man.
 
If we're clear.. this is not a computer/interface mess up- it is the vocal.. Volume automation.
Long, tedious, boring, but totally effective.
On noises like this, you get to decide/control just how much (..depth), and how wide to take out to sound 'ok.. As in when you have too much of a 't or ess' sound, maybe a few dBs of 'dip, vs a complete nuke'.
 
Can you perhaps chop up the vocal take and "crossfade" the clicks out? I guess it depends on the duration of the click noise, but I would try to edit the click out of the recorded track if possible and adjust the timing so that everything still fits.
 
Oh, I'm sorry, I thought it was about an external noise...

I think crossfading would be a good call, but you will have to be patient and do it on every part that has the noise, in a way that doesnt sound too abrupt.
 
Why cross fade'-- i.e. chopping the track up?
One volume or clip automation line (or line per clip' if it's a bunch of punches) with the dips' wherever.
No need to chop into yet smaller pieces..
 
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