How to elimate "Lip Smacking/ Mouth Noises"

[Guest]

Hi,

I,am a video editor/producer and am now producing a series of audio books. I purchased "Adobe Audition" and am impressed with the program.

As I,am a video editor, sound is "New" to me some so help here would be apricated.

I,am recording with an older actor his voice sometimes produces "Smacking" or "Gulping" Swollowing noises. I assume he has moist mouth or something like that.

Never the less he has a great voice and I want to use him but need to get rid of the noises. Any help out there.

Regards

Matt

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

Difficult with that sort of noise. Record him slightly off-axis and slightly above mouth level, but I'm afraid most of the answers to this lie with him. One thing that's quite important is to make sure that the only thing he has to drink anytime around the sessions is clear non-alcoholic liquid (ie, water). Most specifically, avoid fruit juice and anything milky, like tea or coffee - although both of these are okay if taken black. Anything else is likely to cause more mucus in the mouth, and that's really going to hype up the 'smacking' noises.

[Guest]

Hi Steve,

Many thanks for the reply.

Someone has suggest ther "Noise Gate". Do you think that might help.

Matt

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

a gift of heritage wrote:

Someone has suggest ther "Noise Gate". Do you think that might help.

Not really, otherwise I would have suggested it myself. All that happens if you use a noise gate is that you lose not only the sound from the speaker's mouth, but also all of the background noise - and when this comes and goes it will create a 'pumping' sound that after a very short while, will become even more annoying than the sounds you are trying to eliminate - seriously. The only times you will sometimes get away with this (or any other form of volume expansion) is if your voice-over is over a reasonably loud music bed, or other noise, that's louder.

But you said that this is for an audio book, so it's unlikely that the foregoing will apply at all. If people are going to have to listen to him for any length of time, then you really must do something about this at source. I'd be the first to admit that this can be a problem with some talent, though. One thing you can try is to get him to listen to a recording of himself, and see what he thinks about it; very often people are their own worst critics, and that may be all he needs to address the issue. At least it would give you a starting point for talking about it...

If he sits to read, then another thing you can try is to get him to narrate standing up - a lot of actors prefer to do it this way anyway. It will help him to control his breathing rather better, especially on a long read. But, if this is really bad then you will almost certainly have to employ all of the techniques I've mentioned.

[Guest]

Hi Steve,

I spoke with a sound engineer who records his vioce on one of the commerical sites," IsIs audiobook" who applys the Noise gate to all voice talent who he use;s.

I,am a little wary off this after what you say in your previous post and will give his work the once over.

I thing I will adopt you advice and let his lisen to his own vioce.

Many thank for the help.

No doubt I will be back for more info.

Many thanks for your time.

Matt Ryan

[Bob_Howes]

You'd lose nothing by trying a gate--but you'd have to set it up very carefully to ensure it cuts of the "smacking" noises but doesn't clip any softly spoken words. 

However, I have to say that I'm with SteveG on this one.  I've done a lot of recording of voice overs (sort of goes with my 30 years in TV news!) and never had much luck with gates on commentaries.

Steve's suggestions to experiment with mic placement are all good ideas, as are the beverage suggestions.  One other thing to consider is the psychology of the situation--"sticky" lips often come from nerves so anything you can do to make the voice artist feel at ease would be good.

Finally, don't discount going through the recordings and manually cutting the really bad noises.  I know it sounds horribly time consuming but you'll be amazed how fast you can get (and how much control you have).  And, as the technician/producer, you ARE allowed your choice of beverages!

[Guest]

Hi Bob,

I,am going to try recording tomorrow using the tecknics SteveG suggest and see how I get on.

In Regards to your experience in TV, I work on Day time TV and have the luxuary of a sound guy who looks after all the sound. This is a situation where the experiance would have come in handy. I get to just look at the MODELS all day. Vision no sound!.

On another point the actor is very professional and would not suffer from nerviousness. I suspect its his age and mouth becomming moist.

I might upload a sample of his voice for you to give me your feed back. Sometimes its 'Gulping/Swollowing "noises I need to elimatate. Going the manual route to exclude the noises may be it but would this not leave holes in the recording which would sound worse.

With regards to you last point, being from Ireland the choice of Beverage would have to be Guinness but I think there would be some Gagging comming for the other end of the MIC!

Regards

Matt Ryan

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

a gift of heritage wrote:

I spoke with a sound engineer who records his vioce on one of the commerical sites," IsIs audiobook" who applys the Noise gate to all voice talent who he use;s.

Yes, I'm aware that there are some cloth-eared engineers that do this. I've heard the results, and found them to be generally unlistenable to. All I can say is that I've spent over forty years recording voices, and I've never had to resort to using gates at all. Compression and limiting  sometimes, yes - but not gating. Using a gate is tantamount to an admission of failure!

Let me reiterate and add very slightly to the basic rules: Get the mic off-axis from the speaker, just above mouth level, and use a pop screen. Under the circumstances, you probably want the mic about 9" away from the speaker - no closer, or mouth noises will be exaggerated compared to the speech that you actually want to record. Make sure that there's a jug of water and a glass available, and let him take reasonable breaks - I think that having a moist mouth without any mucus-forming stuff in it is likely to reduce extraneous noise, not increase it. The reason for this is that if you have a dry mouth, and have to speak continuously, you will end up swallowing more, and this may well be what you're hearing here.

[Guest]

This is one of the most common if not really annoying aspects of voice recording.  As SteveG mentioned...mic placement, talent standing and only h2o are all you can do and it's roll up the sleeves and start editing out or doing re-takes.   I've found that when the talent starts to go into what I call...mung tung, piffle or denture clicks... I have them purse their lips together and blow for a minute or two and have them wipe their mouth with tissue at the ready, which does help.  There is real no cure.

[Guest]

Hi All,

I,am going to take this in stages as suggested. plenty of H2o, Ask the talent to stand and place him back from the mic.

We are recording tomorrow so I will report back then.

I will take onboard the suggestion not to use the 'Noise Gate". I get what you mean about the  audio being unlistenable. Cerating holes in the track is not the way to go.

Thank for all your help men.

regards

Matt ryan

[Bob_Howes]

Bobaudio's technique of using the marquee tool in spectral view and "spot heal" would likely be my first choice for editing the "clicks" as well.  However, if you have a good, quiet studio (so there's no background noise to pump) the other technique I've used sometimes is to simply use the volume envelope to reduce (rather than silence) the offending noise.  On some people, a bit of noise can sound more natural than cutting it entirely.  Only your ears can tell you which is best!

[Guest]

I have to say that this a wonderful forum, full of experienced professionals, willing to share that experience.

I too have a problem with" lip-smacking-teeth-clicking-swallow-spitting-voice-over!" I use a spare bedroom for recording V/Os and a fairly close mic technique. the studio is very quiet, so I don't have a problem with the b/g noise pumping.

But even in waveform view, Auditon makes these clicks etc very easy to find. I have to do fairly heavy edits in any case, most of our work consists of Buddhist lectures, with lots of very complicated words and phrases, lots of retakes; so once we've made corrections, it's an easy job to take out the odd click, breath etc.

I'll try taking both me and other readers furnther away from the mic (althoug I do like the intimicy and warmth that a closer mic (about 12") creates. One of the other readers is a trained stage actor. I was quite surprised to find that he ahd received absolutely no training in mic techniques (the intimate rather than declamatory  voice).

Again, thanks for a grreat forum.

Brian Rose

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

Brian M Rose wrote:

I'll try taking both me and other readers furnther away from the mic (althoug I do like the intimicy and warmth that a closer mic (about 12") creates. One of the other readers is a trained stage actor. I was quite surprised to find that he ahd received absolutely no training in mic techniques (the intimate rather than declamatory  voice).

Again, thanks for a grreat forum.

12" should be fine - I think it's more important to get the placement right (see above). I'm beginning to think that I should do a FAQ about VO mic technique, because it comes up - well not frequently, but regularly at least.

As for actors and voice training... as far as I'm aware the only training they all get is for the stage, and about saving their voices (in the same way that singers should). Often though there are separate options that they can sign up for which explore more 'realistic' vocal techniques, far more suitable for recording, or TV even. I think that recently there's been more of a tendency to include this in the basic training, because there's been a lot of work to be had in this area. Mainly due to the explosion of useless extra TV channels, etc as far as I can tell. But in general, I don't think it's well covered.

[Guest]

Hi All,

I have just recorded a sample Audio file using some of the advice given here from the above. I think I have solved some or all of my problems.

If you wish you can lisen to the sample and any further feedback would be great.

LINK: http://www.youtube.com/user/DSR45008?feature=mhee

Regards

Matt Ryan

[wisconsinz]

I just used Automatic Click Reduction, with Heavy Reduction selected, for a particularly loud smacking & it worked beautifully. Maintained the actor's voice while eliminating the mouth sounds.

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

It's still best to fix this at source, if you can...

[Bob_Howes]

I THOUGHT I recognised this thread from years ago!

As SteveG says, this is one best eliminated at source.  Have your voice talent keep their mouth moist but avoid any alcohol or any drinks (tea, coffee) containing milk because that can make the mouth more sticky.  Same with fruit juice.   Plain water is good, as is tea with no milk and sugar.  Lately I let a voice artist use iced tea which seemed okay and I've had a guy in who swears by Gatorade.  Well, it works for him.

Also, mic position can make a difference--rather than repeat things, have a read of the previous discussions.

If you have something you MUST fix in post production, my tool of choice is the spot healing brush tool in spectral view.  Yes, it takes a bit of time but you'll be surprised how quick you can get.

Finally, don't forget that you're listening to the stuff over and over.  The audience is probably only hearing it once.  The occasional slight sticky mouth is something people hear many times every day.  It's possible to be too fussy.

[ryclark]

Izotope's RX6 now has a special tool for removing Mouth Clicks, if you can afford the Advanced version.

[Bobaudio]

If you haven't recorded it yet, then fixing it at the source is best. Not my area of expertise, so I'll defer to others here on that. I'd imagine though that some kind of instant feedback for him would help him tone it down. Have him wear headphones to monitor the recording and boost the high frequencies slightly. That would make him very sensitive to it.

But it is possible to edit it by hand to some extent. Unfortunately no automated process is going to work, because while those noises are typically isolated to certain frequency ranges, they happen sporadicly in time. So a static filter cutting certain frequencies won't work well without the side effect of losing other content you want. Noise reduction won't work either, because it relies on the noise being at a consistent level, consistently present, and at a consistent set of frequencies.

But you can likely edit them out by hand with Audition. The initial trick is learning what they look like. In Audition 3.0 the menu sequence is View-->Spectral Frequency Display. Zoom in on the time scale so that only 5-10 seconds of audio are shown, around the area where there's a problem. Listen to it and watch the playback. You'll likely see a thick vertical line in the range of around 4-8kHz where it happens. Now select the Marquee Selection Tool (looke like a square with dashed lines) and draw a box snug around the problem area. You can either press the Delete key on your keyboard, or go to Favorites-->Auto Heal. Delete will erase that area of audio, keeping everything else around it that you want. Auto Heal will blend it a bit more than deleting it, but takes a moment for the processing.

You may have to adjust the settings on the spectral display to more clearly see the artifacts. In Audition 3.0 this is accessed by going to Edit-->Preferences-->Display and then try Bands in the range of 512-1024, window width 100%, and dB range set to 80dB. Hanning window should be fine - pretty much anything other than Triangular is good.

Tedious, but it should work as long as you isolate the right areas. If you have a great recording and this only happened a few times I'd do this. Otherwise if you haven't recorded it yet then stopping it acoustically at the source is best.

[edwardto]

Hi,

I can't record anything without getting lots of clicks (a sharp fine line in the wavefile).  I've tried so many different things and I still get these mouth clicks.  Here's what I now do to help reduce the "click" noise.  I'm using Adobe Audition CS5.5.

After I record my audio I select a portion of the dead air for removing noise.  Then I highlight the file and go to Effects- Amplitued and Compression and select Tube modles Compressor and preset to voice leveler.  This will really compress your audio file.  Then I go back to Effects - Amplitude and Compression and select Hard Limiting with the preset on Light.

Now listen to your file and see if it has reduced some of the clicks.  Really loud clicks might still need to be removed manually.  You can also try DeClicker and the Click remover in the noise reduction window.  I'm using a Shure SM-58 Mic and it picks up all noises.  I might try working about 12 inches away from it to see what it does.  Normally I work about 6 inches away from the mic and sort of talk off to the side of the mic, but it still picks up my mouth clicks.  Hope the above steps helps a little.  It did for me,but I'm still experimenting for another fix to the problem.  Your comments are welcome.

Ed

edwardto@shentel.net

[Guest]

Hi Ed,

Did you have a lisen to my sample. I think I got it as good as its going to be.

I use a "JOE MEEK" ONE Q which I use the compressor on so dont want to over do it.

Did you have a lisen to my sample audio. I,am pleased with the result, what do you think.

Matt

[edwardto]

Hello Matt;

As a matter of fact I did listen to the audio.

I like his Irish sound. And you did a nice job

in removing those annoying lip smacking

mouth noises. Sibilance is another problem

I've encountered. The older versions of

Adobe - Cool Edit Pro had a cure for it.

I'm using the newest CS5.5. I like it a lot.

Sorry, not I'm not familiar with the "Joe Meek"

One-Q setting on the compressor. Would this

be in Adobe? I'll try anything to help rid the

mouth noises. I do find that keeping a bottle

of water (room temperature) handy does help

reduce some of the smack noises. I never

experienced this problem when I was using

analog and tape and I worked very close to the

mic. Digital is more sensitive and distorts easily

whereas analog you could peg the meter once in

a while and not hurt your audio track. So nice to

hear from you. This Adobe forum is a good thing.

Ed

[Guest]

Hi Ed,

The "Joe Meek" is a anlog sound processor. We use it between the mic and digital interface. Great for sofening the voice for what we record, Irish Writers.

LINK: http://www.joemeek.com/oneq.html

I use CS5.5 and find it great if not a bit dounting for first timers like me, but am finding my way around it.

I think you are right about the "Bottle" of water and distance away from mic,.

Regards

Matt

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

Well, I listened to a couple of minutes of it, and whilst I think the voice itself sounds fine, I'm not so sure about the gating. The whole thing now sounds completely unnatural - people reading in the real world just don't sound like that! Even having some 'fake' background would sound better, I feel. Listening to it as it is for any length of time would become rather tiring, I feel.

[Guest]

Hi Steve,

Many thanks for lisening to the recording.

Do you mead the sound is \Pumping"?

Matt