How to remove hiss from a low vocal track?

[YanKleber]

Hi!

I am working on a song that is giving me a bad time with the vocal (again).

It was one of my very first vocals and the signal was recorded a bit low. This is a quiet part of the song but because the low signal I have to increase the fader to get more volume and it is bringing an annoying "hiss" together. I have two possible ugly solutions for this. The first is to make an abrupt cut in the EQ to remove the hi-frequencies and kill the hiss but it is making the vocal sound muddy. Another solution (please don't laugh) is to add a track with a background rain sound to hide the hiss -- the song has a 'rainy' mood in the beggining so it wouldn't sound as bad as it may seem.

However I just will use those 'solutions' in a last resort. I would like to know if there is a profesional trick to take care of this issue. Any idea?

PS: Record it again is not an option, sorry!

Thanks!

 

[miroslav]

I would like to know if there is a profesional trick to take care of this issue. Any idea?

PS: Record it again is not an option, sorry!

Well...that WOULD be the professional "trick".

Not sure why it's not an option to record again? I mean, I see that a lot on these forums, and granted sometimes it has to do with someone else's vocal, and that person is not around anymore or not available to re-record....
...but when it's you, and you obviously have your recording rig at your disposal....why not record it the right way....?

Anyway, everything else is a band-aid solution, and will have trade-offs, and possibly be more of hassle then re-recording the vocal.
That said....there are de-hiss/de-click/de-noise plugs/apps out there. The better "audio restoration" apps have lots of options, but they also aren't cheap, either.

Waves has a large selection:
http://www.waves.com/plugins/noise-reduction-restoration

I have a good resoration pack, but I don't really use it much....it just came as a free bonus with my DAW app purchase.
http://pro.magix.com/en/sequoia/functions/audio-restoration.534.html

 

[Steenamaroo]

Hi!

I am working on a song that is giving me a bad time with the vocal (again).

It was one of my very first vocals and the signal was recorded a bit low. This is a quiet part of the song but because the low signal I have to increase the fader to get more volume and it is bringing an annoying "hiss" together. I have two possible ugly solutions for this. The first is to make an abrupt cut in the EQ to remove the hi-frequencies and kill the hiss but it is making the vocal sound muddy. Another solution (please don't laugh) is to add a track with a background rain sound to hide the hiss -- the song has a 'rainy' mood in the beggining so it wouldn't sound as bad as it may seem.

However I just will use those 'solutions' in a last resort. I would like to know if there is a profesional trick to take care of this issue. Any idea?

PS: Record it again is not an option, sorry!

Thanks!

There are two solutions which really work, in my opinion.
One is rerecording and the other is to mask the hiss with strings, or something similar.

If you luck out and your song is about the seaside, can I recommend a swooshing sea sound effect instead?

As Miro says there are NR tools out there, but you really don't want to be relying on that kind of thing.

 

[YanKleber]

Not sure why it's not an option to record again? I mean, I see that a lot on these forums, and granted sometimes it has to do with someone else's vocal, and that person is not around anymore or not available to re-record....
...but when it's you, and you obviously have your recording rig at your disposal....why not record it the right way....?

It's complicated. If it would ME, I could record it again. But in this case it's not me. It's my wife. And although she is THE singer happens that she is not A singer. She agreed on sing in this album after I convince her that she has an awesome and airy voice (she really has) but I know that it means a huge effort of her part and I really appreciate what she is doing for me. Thanks her good will I am being able to make this old dream come true.

Anyway, since she has NO ONE musical background is very hard to her to learn to sing a song that doesn't play on the radio every day (if you can get me). We recorded this particular song over 2 years ago and every song we record is a 'happening' with whistles and bells because when we start I really cannot be sure if we will manage to finish the song. Yeah, it already happened of we have to abandon a song because she simply couldn't sing a part as it should be.

About the present song I don't want to get back on it again just because there is some hiss due to my incompetence on setup the microphone at that time. We have two more new songs to record in next weeks so I really wouldn't like to push her too hard. I know that it may be a bit tough to understand but... just try to record an album not being a real producer and for the icing on the cake try to make your non-singer wife to be the voice of this album. Oh well! LoL!



I liked the option of try some noise removal plugin. Yah, the problem is that they are expensive and doesn't make too much sense to spend a lot of money on something I am going to use just once. Let's see, I will google for something free... probably there is... maybe...

Thanks for the input!

 

[YanKleber]

There are two solutions which really work, in my opinion.
One is rerecording and the other is to mask the hiss with strings, or something similar.

If you luck out and your song is about the seaside, can I recommend a swooshing sea sound effect instead?

As Miro says there are NR tools out there, but you really don't want to be relying on that kind of thing.

Yo Paul!

The lyrics of this song talk of a woman that was left by her man but that will go over that because there is too much more in life than a heart broken. The song starts very sad and melancolic and then blossoms into joy, either in the lyrics as will in the music.

Anyway, in the two first verses the woman is really feeling sad, alone and empty. And so it is the instrumental arrange of this part. It is calm and propositally empty. Right now the arrange has exactly what I need and if I push any extra instrument there I will ruin the atmosphere. So although the strings idea be good, it won't work for this particular project.

Now, a nature sound would be a good idea (I have had this idea of add a rain noise that would pass a still more sad feeling).

Let's see what I will do!

 

[Steenamaroo]

Now, a nature sound would be a good idea (I have had this idea of add a rain noise that would pass a still more sad feeling).

Go for it.
I've used rain/thunder in songs before.

There's always room for strings though. Look deep within yourself. You'll find the answer.


PS: As always, please post a clip for us to hear the problem.

 

[JimmyS1969]

Go for it.
I've used rain/thunder in songs before.

There's always room for strings though. Look deep within yourself. You'll find the answer.


PS: As always, please post a clip for us to hear the problem.

Yes, a clip would be nice.

 

[rob aylestone]

For goodness sake! Tell her you wrecked it and ask her to do it again. You have the chance to fix it properly, not disguise it. If she hears her voice disguised by effects and noises, do you think she will believe you when you give her voice was fine? Re-record it and do it properly.

 

[YanKleber]

For goodness sake! Tell her you wrecked it and ask her to do it again. You have the chance to fix it properly, not disguise it. If she hears her voice disguised by effects and noises, do you think she will believe you when you give her voice was fine? Re-record it and do it properly.

As extensively explained before, it's not an option.

 

[YanKleber]

Cool, guys, thank you for all inputs! I am making progresses and very soon I will have our album released!

 

[Steenamaroo]

I forgot to say, if the hiss is only audible in the gaps between singing, you can either cut out those gaps, volume automate them, or use a noise gate.
Usually recorded hiss isn't that audible while the source (vocal) is heard.

Let us hear what you're talking about.
There is a few samaritans around here who may help you out.

 

[YanKleber]

Paul, actually I already cut the gaps and the hiss comes together with the singing. It makes the issue still more annoying. Anyway, I will take a look on it a bit later. Now we just had our lunch and after a big chunk of salmon with passion fruit sauce over that plus a bottle of white wine I really have not the lesser conditions of play mixing.

 

[Steenamaroo]

Paul, actually I already cut the gaps and the hiss comes together with the singing. It makes the issue still more annoying.

Wow! It must be bad.
If you're going to share a copy for us to hear, make sure you leave off any effects or processors that you might be using.
It's better to judge the raw wave file. Plus, someone might be able to fix it up and send it back.

Now we just had our lunch and after a big chunk of salmon with passion fruit sauce over that plus a bottle of white wine I really have not the lesser conditions of play mixing.

No worries.

 

[miroslav]

Paul, actually I already cut the gaps and the hiss comes together with the singing. It makes the issue still more annoying.

Yes....it would, because you go form pure digital black to vocals w/hiss.

A de-noise plug would be the only thing that might help. With some, you would actually use (depending on how each plug works) that space in-between the vocals, where there is just the hiss....to tell the de-noise plug what it is you don't want, what it is you are looking to remove.
So the plug first gets "primed" with a sample piece of audio that has just the noise....then you run the plug on the entire track or on each of the clips that have both vocals & noise....and it can effectively remove the bulk of it, with the better plugs leaving the vocals virtually untouched.

 

[Steenamaroo]

Yes....it would, because you go form pure digital black to vocals w/hiss.

I take your point but it's not just that black and white.
Obviously the OP has some pretty bad ass hiss going on, but I've had a few situations where light hiss was only audible at certain points in the song.

It's like lead guitar hum. It's usually worth cutting between parts, if you want to do that.



It's an interesting point though. I once used a spoken word sample throughout a song which had to be cut up to fit with the piece.
The spoken word had audible hiss but it was an old-time recording, so it sounded acceptable.
That said, it was all the more obvious against digital black, as you describe.

I ended up manufacturing a solid track of similar hiss and just running with it throughout the song.
I used a compressor to duck the hiss track when there was spoken word and the whole thing blended in very nicely.



But sure enough, we got the brown M&Ms and Ozzy did a great show.....

 

[miroslav]

Sure....it all depends on how well the vocal (or desired signal) masks the underlying hiss....but as he's discovered, it can often create a more obvious transition, which then actually draws more attention to the hiss than if he left it there.

What I've done on a couple of occasions with similar issue, is rather than cutting it out 100% in-between the wanted audio sections....I simply reduced the level of the noise (or whatever) in-between the wanted sections, so that the amount of masking by the vocal (or desired signal) somewhat equaled the lowered level of the hiss (or wherever) in-between the wanted audio sections.

I've done that with voice-over stuff back in the day when adding narration to videos, and the ambiance in-between the narration was more pronounced. When I tired cutting it out completely, it actually made the ambiance more obvious every time the narration kicked in.

Again....it's all a specific to individual situations, so you just find the best "band-aid" in your first-aid kit, and apply it.

 

[YanKleber]

Hey guys! It's all solved! And it has ended better than I supposed.

This morning I called a friend of mine that has a small studio in town. Normally I wouldn't ask for his help because this is his business and I don't think that is fair to use our friendship to solve my problems regarding to something he does for living. Anyway... I think I was kind of desperated and decided to make an exception. So I told him what was going on and told that I would be glad to pay for the service if he could fix it for me. He told 'sure, just drop here and bring a couple of beers, let's see if we can figure this out'.

Then I put the hiss track in a pen drive and went at his home feeling a bit embarrassed on make he seat in front of his gear in a sunday morning. Anyway, as I said, I was desperated. Getting there he put the track to play and said "Oh yah, this is ugly. But I think that's not a big deal. Actually we can figure it faster than you can open the first beer!"

Then he attached a single plugin to the track and voilà the hiss was gone. "Now we can drink those beers!" he said. So we enjoyed a few beers and talked about all the things but recordings. When it was getting the lunch time and we were about to say goodbye he said "Look at this plugin I put here. See it? It's X-Noise from Waves and that's what solve your issue!" and I answered "Yes, this is great, it's like magic... thank you for that! Anyway, I told you that I would pay for that, how much for you open your studio on a sunday?". I really was expecting that he would charge me some kind of 'symbolic' fee.

"Nah" he said "It was really nothing". So a small silence and he continued "What plugins package are you using for your mixes?" and I answered "Well, you know, a bunch of that stuff we can download for free". So he opened a drawer in his desk and started to browse among a pile of CDs and then he said "OK, so we can do it two ways... you can just continue using your crap plugins and keep coming back here to spoil my sundays OR you can pay me $200 for this Waves CD package that will be the answer of mostly of your issues."

I really wasn't thinking to spend $200 in a plugin package at this time (and I don't know if it even values this price) but after all his good will on help me on a sunday I felt myself with tied hands and said "OK, sounds good... can I give you a check?" while I already was picking my walled. He then laugh and said "Haha, relax! I was kidding with you. Pick it, it's a gift. Go have some fun and don't annoy me anymore with your mix stuff!"

At the end he told me that he had bought the newest package and this was an old one that became useless to him. So I came back home and installed the whole stuff. Now I think that things will get better a lot!



PS: I don't know if he was talking serious about don't annoy him anymore with my mix stuff or just teasing me. I will ask him about this in a few months...

 

[JimmyS1969]

Um, I think you got a cracked copy of Waves plugs there dood.

 

[Steenamaroo]

Um, I think you got a cracked copy of Waves plugs there dood.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure Waves plugs require some kind of authentication.
Older versions use ilok - Newer versions use their license cloud.

Which bundle did you get?

 

[miroslav]

Um, I think you got a cracked copy of Waves plugs there dood.

I wasn't going to go there....but my Spider Sense was picking up the same vibe!


1.) You first need a Waves account.
2.) You need a voucher code per product/bundle.
3.) you need to then go to your Waves account and register the new product.
4.) You then use the Waves License Center app to transfer the serial number/license to your computer where it's installed.

If it's older and needs iLok (when Waves use to use iLok).....it's about the same process, but you then need an iLok thumb drive, you need an iLok account, and you need to do the whole register/transfer process to make it all work.


The old versions would still need all the above to work, even when someone buys new/upgraded verions.....
....otherwise, if not, it's most likely cracked.