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Author Topic: Attenuating clapping in live recordings - the easy way  (Read 56389 times)

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Offline nassau73

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Re: Attenuating clapping in live recordings - the easy way
« Reply #45 on: June 20, 2016, 08:40:02 PM »
When it comes to dealing with loud applause during a quiet concert, I've tried a number of these suggestions and have found there is really no "easy way" to get rid of them.

So I've been using an extremely labor intensive method in Audition - Auto Heal.

This requires that you select and process each individual hand clap. But I've found it to be extremely effective and virtually unobtrusive on shows I want to preserve for my own future listening pleasure.

As an example, I recently attended the Anders Osborne/Luther Dickinson acoustic show at the MACC here on Maui. There was a guy sitting two seats away who insisted on clapping louder and longer than anybody else. He was so loud that he hurt my ears even through my ear plugs!

Attached is a capture of what the applause looks like in spectral view. Following is a capture of how narrow the auto heal selection can be. For anyone whose DAW does not contain auto heal, what it does is replace the selection with a bit of audio from each side of the selection. I've found that even if the "clap" is occurring during the performer's comments after the song is over, there is still no discernible effect on the comment.

Once again, this is very labor intensive and in the case of that gentleman sitting two seats away - I counted between 40 and 80 claps after each song! However, once the claps are eliminated, it's possible to boost or normalize the remaining audio and not be blown away by applause when listening in headphones.


Offline voltronic

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Re: Attenuating clapping in live recordings - the easy way
« Reply #46 on: June 20, 2016, 09:45:58 PM »
This sounds like it was a real pain to do.  Would you mind posting an excerpt of your original and letting us take a crack at it?
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Offline hoserama

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Re: Attenuating clapping in live recordings - the easy way
« Reply #47 on: June 20, 2016, 10:28:46 PM »
If you're going to put in the time and labor for the auto-heal, you could just select the frequency of the clap itself. Claps are usually 800hz-3k range, so you could just select those freqs and time and hit the auto-heal. Make sure you bind the auto-heal feature to an easy key command (I use Shift-1).

Although for claps, I generally just use a tweaked declicker from Ozone RX. Auto-Heal and RX's spectral repair work well for static in wireless recordings.
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Offline nassau73

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Re: Attenuating clapping in live recordings - the easy way
« Reply #48 on: June 21, 2016, 01:07:13 PM »
This sounds like it was a real pain to do.  Would you mind posting an excerpt of your original and letting us take a crack at it?

Here's a short snip from the end of set 1with the full applause:

http://www.filedropper.com/taperssection-sample

Here's that snip after editing:
http://www.filedropper.com/taperssection-edited

Offline voltronic

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Re: Attenuating clapping in live recordings - the easy way
« Reply #49 on: June 21, 2016, 02:50:54 PM »
This sounds like it was a real pain to do.  Would you mind posting an excerpt of your original and letting us take a crack at it?

Here's a short snip from the end of set 1with the full applause:

http://www.filedropper.com/taperssection-sample

Here's that snip after editing:
http://www.filedropper.com/taperssection-edited

Thanks.  Did you try this first in Audacity?  I actually found it pretty easy to get a decent result using the method described in my OP.  I did have to raise the Max Spike Width to 40, and it needed two passes to do a decent reduction.  But I was able to knock the claps down to where I could amplify by +7 dB (leaving 0.2 dB headroom).  A third pass didn't help further.  I could have knocked the claps down even more with limiting, but I wanted to show just what Click Removal could do by itself.
http://www.filedropper.com/taperssection-sampleaudacitydeclick2pass
http://www.filedropper.com/taperssection-sampleaudacitydeclick2pass7db

Then I tried your original file in iZotope RX4, and no surprise - it gave me superior results.  I used the Vinyl Record preset, again as described in the OP with no changes to default settings.  This allowed me to get a bit more reduction, so I could amplify +9.1 dB (again, 0.2 dB headroom).
http://www.filedropper.com/taperssection-samplerxdeclick
http://www.filedropper.com/taperssection-samplerxdeclick91db

All told, I spent about 5 minutes working in each program.  Now, not everyone is going to want to shell out for RX, but I suggest you try the tools in Audacity before you spend so much time and effort doing it the other way again.
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Offline nassau73

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Re: Attenuating clapping in live recordings - the easy way
« Reply #50 on: June 21, 2016, 05:15:38 PM »
This sounds like it was a real pain to do.  Would you mind posting an excerpt of your original and letting us take a crack at it?

Here's a short snip from the end of set 1with the full applause:

http://www.filedropper.com/taperssection-sample

Here's that snip after editing:
http://www.filedropper.com/taperssection-edited

Thanks.  Did you try this first in Audacity?  I actually found it pretty easy to get a decent result using the method described in my OP.  I did have to raise the Max Spike Width to 40, and it needed two passes to do a decent reduction.  But I was able to knock the claps down to where I could amplify by +7 dB (leaving 0.2 dB headroom).  A third pass didn't help further.  I could have knocked the claps down even more with limiting, but I wanted to show just what Click Removal could do by itself.
http://www.filedropper.com/taperssection-sampleaudacitydeclick2pass
http://www.filedropper.com/taperssection-sampleaudacitydeclick2pass7db

Then I tried your original file in iZotope RX4, and no surprise - it gave me superior results.  I used the Vinyl Record preset, again as described in the OP with no changes to default settings.  This allowed me to get a bit more reduction, so I could amplify +9.1 dB (again, 0.2 dB headroom).
http://www.filedropper.com/taperssection-samplerxdeclick
http://www.filedropper.com/taperssection-samplerxdeclick91db

All told, I spent about 5 minutes working in each program.  Now, not everyone is going to want to shell out for RX, but I suggest you try the tools in Audacity before you spend so much time and effort doing it the other way again.

Thanks for the information - very helpful.

No, I did not try the click remover in Audacity but I did use it originally in Audition 3.0. I got similar results as the sample done in Audacity. However, the presence "main" loud clap is was/is still too prevalent for me when listening in headphones. I never tried knocking the claps down even further using limiting primarily because of lack of experience, so I'll try that next time.

I'll be interested to hear the results when the applause starts as a song is fading out rather than primarily on artist comments as in the sample I originally posted.

BTW, I usually use the Audition click remover with satisfactory results. However, none of the more automated processes I tried this time with my limited skills was satisfactory so I decided to bite the bullet and do the individual cleanup route.

I do have to say that I am impressed with the results you achieved using iZotope. After hearing your sample, I remembered that I have the basic iZotope music and speech cleaner that came with my Pinnacle Studio video editing package. I gave that a try after hearing your samples. It didn't seem to do as thorough a job as your version or the individual auto heal process I did - however - it did seem to get things to a manageable level with the slider set all the way to 10 (now if it only went to 11  ;D )

Thanks again for your insights.


Offline obaaron

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Re: Attenuating clapping in live recordings - the easy way
« Reply #51 on: July 17, 2016, 11:51:41 PM »
so my wsp show from last night has clapping, whistling throughout what method do you guys recommend? Using audacity....thx
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Offline voltronic

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Re: Attenuating clapping in live recordings - the easy way
« Reply #52 on: July 18, 2016, 07:26:48 AM »
so my wsp show from last night has clapping, whistling throughout what method do you guys recommend? Using audacity....thx

Nonstop or periodically?  Maybe if you post part of a track we can give it a shot and see what works.
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ipietri

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Re: Attenuating clapping in live recordings - the easy way
« Reply #53 on: September 08, 2016, 05:27:23 AM »
I use "handles" in Wavelab audio montage - see images before and after

LoveBuzz81

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Re: Attenuating clapping in live recordings - the easy way
« Reply #54 on: March 25, 2017, 12:24:36 PM »
How can you attenuate/filter only frequencies that are above a certain db level?  (for quiet performances with clapping 10 db's louder than the music.). This should be straightforward... not sure how to execute this with Logic or Audacity.

Offline Sloan Simpson

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Re: Attenuating clapping in live recordings - the easy way
« Reply #55 on: March 25, 2017, 01:27:55 PM »
Limiter

LoveBuzz81

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Re: Attenuating clapping in live recordings - the easy way
« Reply #56 on: March 25, 2017, 01:57:39 PM »
Limiter

Any particular type of limiter?  Basically I want to filter all frequencies/sound -6db and louder and then normalize the wav file.
« Last Edit: March 25, 2017, 01:59:36 PM by LoveBuzz81 »

Offline Sloan Simpson

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Re: Attenuating clapping in live recordings - the easy way
« Reply #57 on: March 25, 2017, 02:21:20 PM »
Limiter

Any particular type of limiter?  Basically I want to filter all frequencies/sound -6db and louder and then normalize the wav file.

Any limiter will do that, though some have more control than others over how it's accomplished. I use FabFilter Pro-L.

LoveBuzz81

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Re: Attenuating clapping in live recordings - the easy way
« Reply #58 on: March 25, 2017, 05:48:55 PM »
Limiter

Any particular type of limiter?  Basically I want to filter all frequencies/sound -6db and louder and then normalize the wav file.

Any limiter will do that, though some have more control than others over how it's accomplished. I use FabFilter Pro-L.

Hmm, I'm trying a noise gate but it's only filtering sound below a certain threshold rather than above.  I'll check out some other plugins.

Offline voltronic

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Re: Attenuating clapping in live recordings - the easy way
« Reply #59 on: March 25, 2017, 07:23:50 PM »
How can you attenuate/filter only frequencies that are above a certain db level?  (for quiet performances with clapping 10 db's louder than the music.). This should be straightforward... not sure how to execute this with Logic or Audacity.

My preferred way in Audacity:

1. Highlight the area with loud clapping.
2. Effect > Hard Limiter
3. Set Residue Level to 0.7  Basically this softens the limiter somewhat making it not sound offensive like a limiter often does.
4. Set dB limit to -12 or so.  You may have to set it a little bit lower than you think because changing the Residue Level makes your setting here less than a "hard" limit.
5. Hit OK, then decide if that does what you wanted it to without actually limiting the music.  You will have to go back and forth and undo / redo a couple of times to get it where you want.  Make sure to leave Residue Level at 0.7, but adjust the dB limit.
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