Topic: Any ways to scrub bench-banging?

[Powerage5]

Taped a show last night at a state fair - all seated on metal bleacher benches. Pretty good capture, except the crowd opted to bang on the benches with their hands almost constantly all evening. Any ideas how I might be able to go about scrubbing this out? I assume it’ll be a lot more difficult than clapping because of the frequency range. I’ve got Audacity, Izotope RX 10, and Ultimate Vocal Remover 5 on my Mac as my normal editing tools. Happy to post a sample tonight when I get home from work if it helps at all. Would appreciate any insight anyone has!

[beatkilla]

Let me guess

Nys fair.


I had the same issue at a show there a few nights ago.

Good luck but I doubt your getting rid of it.

[Powerage5]

Good guess. I suspected that may be the case, but was hoping someone on here might have some ideas. A quick spot check of my recording showed it didn’t come out as strong on my recording as I was hearing it in real time, but it’s definitely there pretty constant.

[beatkilla]

Was this at dropkick?


Maybe this venue is a good candidate for iem taping.

[Powerage5]

It was, yeah.

Never tried my hand at IEM taping before. I have no idea how involved it is or if I even have the right gear for it. But I know I wouldn’t really be inclined to tape audience at the state fair again after the headache last night with the crowd.

[voltronic]

RX continues to be my Swiss army knife for this sort of thing. You need at least the Standard version to have Spectral Repair. It takes a lot of practice and experimentation, but I've gotten some amazing results with it.

The greatest magic trick I ever pulled off with it was this past May. I was working on a classical choir and chamber orchestra concert, where the first violinist had a persistent and very loud cough all through the 40-minute piece being performed. Guess where the main mic array was located? And did she avoid coughing in the quiet sections? I was able to reduce the 100+ loud coughs to the point where most were completely inaudible, but it took a lot of work. Not all the coughs were processed the same way, either. Some used Attenuate; others Replace. Oh, and the organist hit a chord very fast but a measure early. I was able to zap that as well. Basically RX enabled me to take a recording with lots of distractions and make it quite nice to listen to.

Now, I'm not saying it will cure your situation for sure, but it's your best bet, IMO. I'd be happy to take a crack at it over the weekend if you send a sample.

[robgronotte]

Izotope RX is definitely your best bet for something like this. It likely will be obvious where in the graphic spectralpattern the unwanted noise is, as it won't be the same frequency as music or singing.
Might even be pretty easy to do each spot, just very tedious to do all of them.

[Powerage5]

RX continues to be my Swiss army knife for this sort of thing. You need at least the Standard version to have Spectral Repair. It takes a lot of practice and experimentation, but I've gotten some amazing results with it.

The greatest magic trick I ever pulled off with it was this past May. I was working on a classical choir and chamber orchestra concert, where the first violinist had a persistent and very loud cough all through the 40-minute piece being performed. Guess where the main mic array was located? And did she avoid coughing in the quiet sections? I was able to reduce the 100+ loud coughs to the point where most were completely inaudible, but it took a lot of work. Not all the coughs were processed the same way, either. Some used Attenuate; others Replace. Oh, and the organist hit a chord very fast but a measure early. I was able to zap that as well. Basically RX enabled me to take a recording with lots of distractions and make it quite nice to listen to.

Now, I'm not saying it will cure your situation for sure, but it's your best bet, IMO. I'd be happy to take a crack at it over the weekend if you send a sample.

Happy to share a sample! I’ll trim one down after work tonight. I do have RX 10 Standard, though I’m quite new to it and still learning the ropes. Been playing around with the spectral repair on my older recordings to varying degrees of success, there’s definitely a bit of a learning curve with it when making the step up from doing everything in Audacity as I had in the past.

The biggest problem I’m having is sometimes I just can’t spot what I’m hearing when I look at the spectrogram. Like when it’s a whistle or holler in between songs that’s easy, but when it’s during a song sometimes it just looks muddled to me, like I don’t see enough separation in the spectrogram.

[Rairun]

I once managed to remove a fan "drumming" along to the music by kicking/punching the barricade with Izotope RX's instrument separation module - the kicks and punches were picked up as drums. It was a solo performance (vocals+guitar) though, so it was much easier than it could have been.

[nulldogmas]

Sometimes Music Rebalance can be a useful first step, though — once you've separated out a percussion stem, it can be easier to identify and remove unwanted banging.

[Powerage5]

Here’s a sample of the recording I’m working with - this was one of the more egregious bench-banging songs of the evening. This is just the raw recording - I haven’t run a de-click, amplified, etc. yet at all.

https://we.tl/t-d3gh8piTcp