Thinking of switching from condenser to dynamic in order to reduce mouth clicks

karljobst

New member
Hi,

I currently use an at2020 USB and I have really bad mouth clicks. It picks them up really badly and I need to do many takes to get one that is decent enough for me to fix up in post.

I'm thinking about investing in a Shure SM7b. Will this pick up mouth clicks less and make them less severe?

I'm obviously going to continue to try and practice vocal technique but I'm not sure I'll be able to fix the root problem, so getting the easiest mic to use for this is what I'm going for atm.

Thanks.
 
Hi there, and welcome to HR! :)

Using a dynamic may reduce mouth clicks to some extent, just because they're generally not as strong and detailed in the high end as capacitor mics, but I'm not sure the difference would big enough to consider it a solution.

Usually when mouth clicks and noises are a problem, there are three main things to look at.

1: The signal (spoken/sung word) is too quiet.
2: The person is actually making unnaturally loud mouth noises.
3: Heavy compression has been used.

If you think any of those things might be the case, it'd be ideal to address those first.

For passages where the voice needs to be quiet, like a whispered portion in an audio book for example, it might be necessary to make a conscious effort to minimise unwanted mouth noises,
use a noise gate before compression, or manually volume automate clicks and smacks.

Hope that's helpful.
 
In addition to [MENTION=43272]Steenamaroo[/MENTION]'s suggestions, just being too close to the mic will make it worse.

The iZotope RX plugin does a pretty good job on mouthclicks (there's a preset for that). I confess I have it in most of my templates, though I only turn it on if I hear something annoying, sometimes just automating it where needed. (All these kinds of things can have artifacts - the RX de-esser has a *lot* - so always A/B with and without over the entire track if you just leave it on.)
 
Thanks for the responses. After I made this topic I did discover iZotope RX as well. I watched some videos and the de-click appears to be EXACTLY what I need and would obviously be a much cheaper option. I'll trial it out, but from what i've seen it looks very promising.
 
Thanks for the responses. After I made this topic I did discover iZotope RX as well. I watched some videos and the de-click appears to be EXACTLY what I need and would obviously be a much cheaper option. I'll trial it out, but from what i've seen it looks very promising.

Yeah...but you should first try to solve the problem at the source (next time you track vocals)...and then only resort to the post-fix as a no other option solution.
Try and figure out why you are getting the mouth clicks...it's not really the mic.
 
I concur - you need to remove the problem and not seek solace in solutions that may not be available sometimes. Somebody hears your work, and offers you more at their studio. Problem coming up! Could we hear an example - our idea of a click might be like when people complain about a hum, or a buzz and they don't actually have one of those, but some other audio problem?
 
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