Salvage poor headset mic recording?

[Schneckensirup]

Hi, I am in desperate need of help. I received a podcast recording to clean up, made with a headset mic (I know, terrible!). We usually never use those mics for recording, but in this particular case there was no other option. 

In addition to a few plosives (which I can deal with), there is a constant air "puff" in the background. Is there anything I can do to at least reduce this? I've attached a sound sample. I know - garbage in, garbage out. This is a really bad recording , but can anything be done? I'd be grateful for any suggestions. Thanks!

[MikeHarrison]

The quality of this mic, itself, sounds fine. But those "puffs" ARE plosives. Plosives don't happen only with the letter "P;" a plosive occurs anytime there is a direct blast of breath (or air) into the mic. This person just happened to have the mic far too close to his mouth, and this is the result. Some of them may be fixable, and some may be only reduceable... by locating each one the Spectral Frequency display (they are low frequency noises, so they will appear as bright yellow blotches – see the screenshot)This is the "ge" in the word "page, about 10 seconds into the file.

, highlighting each one separately using the marquee selection tool and reducing the gain until they sound OK to you. But it will require addressing each one separately because they are all different.

Is it possible you can have the guy re-record the piece and tell him to move the tip of the mic to just outside the corner of his mouth (not directly in front)? Let him know why you're asking him to do this and have him do a couple of tests until he gets the positioning right. Again, IF you can caonvince him to re-record. If not, depending on how long the piece is, it could be a nightmare.

[Schneckensirup]

Mike, thank you so much for replying quickly, I really appreciated it. As you can tell, I am fairly new to audio editing... This is a long piece, so yes... would be an absolute nightmare. I sent a request to re-record, hope he agrees. Thanks again!

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

If you can't get a re-record, then the other way you can easily and effectively reduce plosives is to use the marquee tool, as already mentioned, but instead of playing with the volume, use the Favorite 'Auto Heal'. This generally does a good job on plosives (I tried it on some of yours, and it clears them up a lot), and more importantly, you can assign a short-cut key to it, making it much easier and faster to use.

[MikeHarrison]

Silly me! For some reason, I didn't think to use Auto Heal here. Thanks, Steve.

[Schneckensirup]

Hi Mike and Steve, thanks again for your responses. So I've asked the guys to re-record. This time he held the headset away from his mouth. Better, but it sounds a lot like someone on the phone. Then he used his webcam mic for recording, which I think is better, but now we have this kind of "bathroom" sound. I'll attach the "raw" file, no noise removal applied yet. Just had to cut out some private content. Any tips what I could do to improve this? Thank you so much again, I really really appreciate it.

Not sure how to add the file to the post, I will add it to the original post, named "test recording"