Purging Plosives in your vocals.

From Darren Burgos at MacPro Video.

 “Plosives”  can make or break the recording. Even with a pop filter, they still have a tendency to sneak their way in! There's a letter in the alphabet that puts fear in the hearts of home recording engineers ...P! The other is B to a lesser extent. 

In this article, I'll show you two ways to remove them without simply stripping away the lows with a high pass filter. I've included a vocal sample so you can experiment with it, or just load up a track you know that has them. If you'll be listening to these samples through an iPad or mobile phone speaker, you most likely will not hear the difference between the samples. Plosives are almost always in the low frequency range, and most of these devices built-in speakers can't replicate frequencies low enough. Use headphones.

Darren uses these two methods to clean up loud pops.

Step 1. Start with a Multipressor setting band 1 to 2oohz to cut a majority of the of the P or B and then adjust the other settings so as not to remove anything else. Here are the final settings.

Step 1, use a Multipressor. You only want to reduce the plosives.

Step 2. Next use the Sample Editor to reduce the plosive even more.

Now use the pencil tool to reduce the problem even more.

Here's a tip from Darren.

If you haven't zoomed in far enough, the Pencil Tool acts as the Zoom Tool. Once you've zoomed in far enough though, you'll literally be able to draw out the plosive. Try to follow the natural curve of the waveform before and after the plosive for the best result.

Per Darren, Try to follow the natural curve of the signal...

This is a great tutorial for anyone doing VO editing or a mixer who has to deal with a poorly recorded vocal.

Purging Plosives with Logic Pro - Logic Pro - macProVideo.com Hub.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Message
Your Name *
Your Email *
Website

Contact us

ARE YOU IN NEED OF A QUALIFIED
POST PRODUCTION PARTNER?

JUST WANT TO SAY HELLO?

Send us a message using the contact form. We never pass up an opportunity to talk shop.

×