Audio spikes?

Hi all,

Major newbie here. :) I recently purchased my first microphone (Shure SM58) to record a podcast. I posted a week or go when mixing the last episode and was given the feedback to get closer to the mic. With the episode I'm mixing now, I'm wondering what I can do to avoid these audio spikes on my "s"s. Is there anything I can do mixing wise to make them a little easier on the ears, or is it all going to be in my mic technique? Right now I have the mic at a 45 degree angle from my mouth, with a pop filter, about 4-5 inches away from my mouth. This clip is with 10:1 compression at -20db threshold (I was given the feedback to compress at 20:1 ratio but Audacity only goes up to 10:1, which definitely sounds better than the 3:1 I was doing before).

Short clip (I'm too new to post links, sorry for the annoying format):

drive.google DOT COM/file/d/1P3naS2nXxEqEX9iH0Mye_OPNtScmG4yb/view?usp=sharing

Thank you!
 

Might be a touch too close, but I hear mostly mouth-clicks and some sibilance. 10:1 sounds like a lot of compression, and that's going to exacerbate both of those, so if you can't mitigate them in your vocal technique, I'd say you need to look at something like RX Elements to tackle the noise *before* you compress the snot out of it.

You might also try multiple passes with the compressor set at a lower ratio, or use a DAW that lets you add multiple plugins and play with adjustments and listen as you mix. Audacity is a hard way to fine tune compression (IMO/IME).

P.S. I think now with 5 posts (?) you can attach an MP3, but it might be instructive to post the unprocessed WAV so we can better tell if it's primarily a vocal problem or FX one.
 
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