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Participant
March 12, 2019
Answered

How do I remove breaths from long recordings to save time?

  • March 12, 2019
  • 6 replies
  • 45880 views

I'm using Adobe Audition CC (2018) to record a 5000 word corporate Explainer voiceover.  I normally just remove breaths individually using either the insert 'silence' or delete method.  However it will take far too long to do this on what will be an approximate 30 minute recording.  Is there a way that I can remove or reduce breaths in one go? Also, secondly  would this also work for mouth noises/ clicks? I'm quite new to using Adobe audition and voice recording and although I know how to use the Noise Reduction capture and process functions, fast breath removal is a new one on me. Any tips/ pointers would be appreciated.  Please note that I am not in any way a sound or music engineer so simple non-tech language works with me

    Correct answer yvesg35131798

    FINALLY!

     

    I HAVE FOUND THIS!  

     

    And this is EXACTLY what I am looking for!  ...with no arguing over the need!

     

    OK I think I found the answer! There was a very good video on YouTube here: Adobe Audition CC 2018 - New Noise Gate Effect - YouTube

    Hi Ken! Thanks for sharing my YouTube tutorial on this and glad it worked for you.

     

    A summary of the process:

     

    1. Window > Amplitude Statistics.

    2. Highlight the noise floor (background audio with no speech).

    3. Click Scan Selection and make a note of the Peak Amplitude.

    4. Effects > Amplitude and Compression > Dynamics... tick AutoGate and type a Threshold 1dB or so higher than the number from step 3 and you're done!

     

     

     

     

    If you find your speech is getting cut off at the start and end just increase the Hold setting a little.

     

     

     

    6 replies

    July 3, 2023

    I see a lot of folks stating to leave breaths in but I think it really depends on the context. Especially with professional voice actors who breath much more often, you definitely need to clean that up for certain productions. Honestly, just do what sounds good for what your end goal and medium is.

    jayh81986974
    Participating Frequently
    February 11, 2021

    Izotope RX8 is the ultimate automated breath control remover. And noise remover. I haven't seen anything that touches it. I used to remove breath by hand too.

    July 3, 2023

    Totally forgot about this amazing software.

    Participant
    October 29, 2020

    I believe yourself and Steve are arguing about two different things. You wish to reduce the sound of the breath but not remove the actual pause caused by taking a breath. Removing the pause of a comma or period when we intake break creates a VERY weird neural response. Steve is correct those pauses should stay, but you are also correct within that pause there should be no sound itself. Made perfect sense to me as well and I used your Noise Gate youtube video link to do it quickly and easiy, so thank you SO MUCH!! 🙂 

    yvesg35131798Correct answer
    Inspiring
    March 15, 2020

    FINALLY!

     

    I HAVE FOUND THIS!  

     

    And this is EXACTLY what I am looking for!  ...with no arguing over the need!

     

    OK I think I found the answer! There was a very good video on YouTube here: Adobe Audition CC 2018 - New Noise Gate Effect - YouTube

    Hi Ken! Thanks for sharing my YouTube tutorial on this and glad it worked for you.

     

    A summary of the process:

     

    1. Window > Amplitude Statistics.

    2. Highlight the noise floor (background audio with no speech).

    3. Click Scan Selection and make a note of the Peak Amplitude.

    4. Effects > Amplitude and Compression > Dynamics... tick AutoGate and type a Threshold 1dB or so higher than the number from step 3 and you're done!

     

     

     

     

    If you find your speech is getting cut off at the start and end just increase the Hold setting a little.

     

     

     

    September 14, 2019

    Try using AutoGate

    Rowby
    Inspiring
    August 31, 2020

    Hi Vexter,

     

    Any link for the Autogate you recommended?  The link I found took me to a Japanese version of Yahoo to "download" the pluigin.


    Thanks

    Rowby

    Participant
    October 30, 2020

    This video from Mike Russel is good: https://youtu.be/pjYpETq_Jc8

    SteveG_AudioMasters_
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    March 12, 2019

    You can't really remove breaths automatically - and by and large you shouldn't be, anyway - especially in something that claims to be explaining something.

    The reason for this is gloriously simple; it's during the breaths that people assimilate what was in the previous sentence, and breaths are an important part of this. Put simply, removing breaths will reduce assimilation by your audience - probably the opposite of what you intended...

    On top of that, breathing is a natural thing to do - everybody does it... so we are accustomed, when we listen to people in real life, to hearing them breathing. Remove that, and it sounds plain unnatural. If you want somebody to explain something, then let them do it naturally - it always works better.

    As far as voice clicks are concerned, only remove them if they're really annoying - sometimes they are, especially if there are a lot of them. But once again, there's no way to automate this, I'm afraid - they are all unique.

    Inspiring
    March 14, 2020

    Dear Steve,

     

    May I TOTALLY disagree with you on this?  I am recording audio books and I do need to replace all and every breath sounds from all my files in order to produce commercial saleable audio books. 

    I might be wrong, but even Audible is requesting from their suppliers to have -60db as a noise floor level.

    But anyway, the need is there : to replace all breath sounds with silence.  Right now I am doing it manually by selecting every breath sound at any given lenght and replacing it with a silence using a keyboard shortcut that I have created.

    If there were a function in Audition, like the one we have in Microsoft Word : search and replace, I could save hours of dull work!  Is this possible to replace in a faster way than mine those breath sounds (that I do need to replace)?

    Thanks! 

    Inspiring
    March 15, 2020

    Sorry, but I don't believe you. If you do a search relating to whether people prefer natural-sounding speech or having it processed for no breathing, I can't find a single reference to anybody prefering the lack of breath sounds at all, and a lot of references to people saying that you shouldn't do that to speech. Also there's some academic research that indicates an actual preference for breath sounds, although the authors want to do some more research on that. But hey, let's take what ACX have to say about it:

     

    'Each uploaded file must be free of extraneous sounds such as plosives, mic pops, mouse clicks, excessive mouth noise, and outtakes.'

     

    Nowhere does it mention removing natural breathing sounds. Plosives and mic pops - yes, they shouldn't be there. Excessive mouth noise shouldn't be there either, and that's an issue for your talent to deal with - but that's not breathing. I don't know why they bothered mentioning outtakes - who'd submit those? Breathing, though, is a part of the natural delivery of the artist, and is an essential component of a good read.

     

    The only 'legitimate' use of what's actually called de-breathing is in commercials, apparently to stop listeners being even slightly distracted from a short commercial message, but that's it - nowhere else is it appropriate.


    Steve,

    you are still arguing with me about the non necessity of removing breath noises and this is meaningless to me.

    My  request is simple : are you able  to give me a technical procedure to do so (or not) in Adobe Audition?

    If you cannot, please say so and please stop arguing with me about what for me is a need even if you think there is no need to do that.

    It is possible to do so in Audacity.  Is it also  possible in Audition?

    Thanks!