Hello! This is Jooyoung Kim, a mixing engineer and music producer.
Today, I’d like to say about the problem of recording source and how to solve. This article is based on my book “Basics of Mixing” released at South Korea.
Let’s dive in!
1) Noise Floor
If you use analog hardware, electricity causes certain noise across all frequency range. We call this “Noise Floor”.
So if you recording with microphone pre-amplifier or use outboards, you have to recognize and keep in mind it. Although you can’t hear the noise in mixing step, but it could make problem in mastering step .
This matter could be fixed with plug-ins like iZotope’s RX bundles(Spectral De-Noise). But when the source processed, you will hear High Frequency & Low Frequency loss. So I don’t use it often until have no choice.
2) Popping Noise
Popping Noise, A.K.A pop noise, is caused by popping sound. If you look closely upper picture, could understand it’s usually belong low frequency. So it could solved with low cut(high pass) filter.
However when you record voice, use pop filter is best method to prevent popping noise.
3) Sibilance
Sibilance is hissing sound when you pronounce like “S”. This high frequency sound can be perceived as louder than other frequencies due to the equal loudness contour.
You able to use De-Esser plug-ins or EQ to solve this problems. Another method involves cutting the sibilant peaks and adjusting the gain of the affected clip.
4) Click Noise
When you check the records, you could find click sounds frequently. In vocal records, lips make those noise. Drawing waves with pencil tools will solve this problem.
There have another way, use De-Click plug-ins. However I don’t like this method. It makes high frequency loss.
5) Clipped Noise, Distortion
If the recording is distorted like this from the beginning, the best solution is simply to re-record it.
You might want to ask the client to double-check their export/bounce to see if the distortion originated there.
If the recording is distorted and re-recording is impossible, you can try to fix it with plugins like De-Clip, although you’ll have to sacrifice some audio quality.
6) Ambience
In the past, there was no way to fix recorded ambience. However, nowadays, there are many plugins that remove reverb and ambience from companies like Waves, UAD, and Izotope, so it’s not as big of a problem anymore..
7) Ambience
You can consider most other issues beyond these as unresolvable. If noise is caused by electrical issues and is consistently present, you can address it by dealing with the noise floor. However, if it appears intermittently, it’s impossible to fix.
Similarly, if a problem occurs consistently, there’s a good chance it can be fixed. But things like construction noise from nearby or the ticking of a clock are difficult to remove.
In this post, we discussed various problems with recorded audio and how to solve them.
The next chapter was originally going to be about groove and sidechaining. However, This is one of the key topics in my book, so I’ve decided not to cover it on the blog.. I don’t want to give away all the content for free and be unfair to those who purchase the book. I hope you understand.
From the next post onwards, I’ll be talking about outboard gear.
See you in next post! 🙂
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