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What are Plosives and How to Fix Them
Engineers have been trying to avoid plosives for as long as the voice has been recorded.
There are of course many ways to avoid recording plosives during tracking, but what if that option is long past, and you’re stuck with a plosive heavy track?
You can remove plosives in post production by attenuating or fully cutting the frequencies they occupy. Since plosives are an overloading of a microphone’s capsule, due to a excessive air pressure, they typically occupy lower, bass heavy frequencies.
How do plosives occur?
Plosives start when a singer or speaker pronounces certain breath heavy consonants. The air from the vocalist in turn strikes a microphone’s capsule, causing overwhelming air pressure. This results in an either a windy sound, or if it is strong enough, a popping sound.
Typically the consonants that cause plosives to be recorded are most often the Pa, Ba, and Fa sound, although other “stop consonants" such as Ta or Ka, can cause the release of air needed to create a plosive.
Examples of Plosives:
'Pa' 'Ba' 'Fa' Plosives
How to Remove them From Recorded Audio
Option 1:
The frequency range that plosives occupy can range from 20Hz, all the way to roughly 1kHz.
The frequency spectrum of a 'Pa' plosive
That being said, the low frequencies will be the most prominent and noticeable to a listener.
Using a low-cut, or a high-pass filter, you can cut those frequencies up to about 120Hz. By doing so, you have attenuated the majority of the plosive’s energy, and made it significantly less perceivable.
A 24dB per octave slope was used for this high-pass filter.
Be careful not to cut too much of your vocal. If you do, you may lose a lot of your vocal’s natural low end.
Before:
Pay particular attention to the word 'Put'
After:
Option 2:
If you want to attenuate plosives, but not cut the low end out of your vocal there is another option.
By using a dynamic EQ, you can attenuate a certain band of frequencies, and set a threshold similar to how you would when using a compressor.
Whenever the signal crosses the threshold, the band of frequencies you set will be pulled down, effectively attenuating the signal, only when these plosives occur.
Although a dynamic EQ may not always be as effectively as a low cut filter, it should be consider a viable option for removing pops.
Using this method ensures that the sonic characteristic of your vocal stays intact, while attenuating plosives should they occur.
Before:
After:
Conclusion:
Post production may not be the best time to address plosives, since they can be avoided during tracking with some planning. That being said, they can still cause problems even if precautions have been taken.
Use these techniques along with others to ensure you vocal is clear, and ready or mixing and eventual mastering.
Can you think of another way to get rid of a plosive?
So, Why A Membership?
Let’s face it — trying to create professional mixes without the correct knowledge, tools, services, and network is like playing a concert with a broken instrument to an audience of no one.
That’s where the Sage Audio membership comes in — the membership gives you everything you need to create professional mixes consistently.
The membership is the secret to your success — it’s the difference between the 1,929,999,999 of poor-sounding mixes and the .00000002% of mixes that make people say 'WOW!"
There are 7 unique value-points included in your Sage Audio membership.
Let’s go over each one so you can decide if the membership is right for you.
1. Sage Audio University
SAU Flagship Mixing Course: 23-video in-depth mixing course that reveals the little-known secrets of mixing and matches the needs of the new music industry.
SAU Flagship Mastering Course: 19-video in-depth modern mastering course that dives into every nuance of making professional-sounding masters.
SAU Pre-Mastering Course: Concise pre-mastering course that details the latest industry standards for preparing your mixes for mastering.
SAU is designed for every experience level, ranging from budding mixing engineers to advanced engineers. The techniques and concepts taught can be applied to any DAW to create industry-leading mixes without expensive software or plugins - and free plugin alternatives are suggested throughout each course.
Each SAU course includes Start-to-Finish session walkthrough lessons for multiple genres so you can follow along with your preferred genre.
SAU Certification Document, which can be downloaded and showcased on your website and social channels.
The Sage Audio private 1-on-1 Mentorship gives you direct access to us for advanced mixing feedback, in-depth discussions, and customized guidance that's tailored to your specific needs.
Unlimited private access to us for advanced mixing feedback, where we provide detailed suggestions for improvement.
Unlimited private access to us for in-depth discussions to help you improve every aspect of your mixes and masters.
Customized guidance that’s tailored specifically to your needs.
Fast communication so you can improve your skills quickly.
Unlimited professional mixing feedback directly from us so you can consistently improve your skills and create professional mixes.
Mixing feedback is invaluable, and the Sage Audio membership gives you continual direct access to us for real-world feedback so you can improve every aspect of each of your mixes while you're in the process of mixing.
50 free mastered songs per year with your own dedicated professional mastering engineer so you can get all your mixes sounding like professional songs.
You get your own dedicated Sage Audio mastering engineer to create custom masters that are specific to you and sound exactly how you want.
Unlimited revisions with your dedicated mastering engineer. As a standard of our service, we are not happy until you are happy with the sound of your masters.
All masters are delivered as commercial, industry-standard high-resolution 24-bit HD WAV masters so they will sound clean and clear on every platform.
The Sage Audio community is a tight-knit community of passionate audio engineers who can provide you with additional real-world mixing feedback, meaningful discussions, networking, collaborations, and more.
Access 700+ in-depth Sage Audio mixing and mastering videos - curated and organized into categories so you can easily take a deep dive into all aspects of audio engineering with thousands of hours of concise, expertly crafted Sage Audio videos to continually improve your skills at your own pace.