Gear / Technical Help > Post-Processing, Computer / Streaming / Internet Devices & Related Activity
Attenuating clapping in live recordings - the easy way
stevetoney:
I use the noise reduction tool VERY sparingly because, in my experience, I think it's very intrusive to the rest of the master recording which you don't want to be touched. So, I've never liked the results I get applying the noise reduction in Audition 1.5 for clapping. I either isolate each clap and bring down the levels or use the hard limit tool.
Maybe I just need to find the perfect settings, but I've played with the settings quite a bit and never found anything that I like. I always found that the dynamics of the remaining sections were altered too much for my liking. My 'issue' seemed to be that I could never get the settings dialed in right for the noise reduction tool to work without causing the music on either side of the clap to sound like it's muted and/or underwater. So if I decrease the settings enough that so there's no impact on the music, it doesn't do anything to the clap...but if I increase the settings enough to eliminate the claps, the tool then messes up the sound of the music. Even momentary analog noise spikes, like someone kicking my stand or a beach ball hitting my mics, aren't effectively removed by this tool without the resulting sound being impacted. That said, I've had great luck using the tool to remove isolated digi noise spikes.
Having said the above, I'm not willing to sacrifice any on the sound of the music in order to deal with the claps, so maybe my comment is based on the fact that I haven't found any settings that work well enough for my liking. But again, I've tried and I've never found any settings I'm happy with, so I go with the hard limiter or the 'isolate the clap' method.
EDIT TO ADD: I'm curious to know if 'power users' have any luck with the noice reduction tool on clapping (vs. hard limiting). If they do, then I'd like to know what settings you use and/or how I can better apply the settings than I have.
voltronic:
--- Quote from: tonedeaf on July 08, 2013, 10:44:25 AM ---I use the noise reduction tool VERY sparingly because, in my experience, I think it's very intrusive to the rest of the master recording which you don't want to be touched. So, I've never liked the results I get applying the noise reduction in Audition 1.5 for clapping. I either isolate each clap and bring down the levels or use the hard limit tool.
snip
Having said the above, I'm not willing to sacrifice any on the sound of the music in order to deal with the claps, so maybe my comment is based on the fact that I haven't found any settings that work well enough for my liking. But again, I've tried and I've never found any settings I'm happy with, so I go with the hard limiter or the 'isolate the clap' method.
EDIT TO ADD: I'm curious to know if 'power users' have any luck with the noice reduction tool on clapping (vs. hard limiting). If they do, then I'd like to know what settings you use and/or how I can better apply the settings than I have.
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IMHO, noise reduction is never going to be the best choice for something like clapping because a noise reduction algorithm it's looking for steady-state noise to cancel (ex. HVAC drone, hiss, etc.) as opposed to intermittent random noise like clapping, etc. That said, I've never been satisfied with Audacity's noise reduction - it always has given me the phasey "underwater" sound you experienced, or it sucked out percussive transients from the music. BUT - the noise reduction in iZotope RX quite frankly is spectacular. It really is able to cancel the background noise without harming the actual music, at least to my ears. This is no help for claps or stand hits though.
Click Removal (or whatever your program of choice calls this) is made specifically to address intermittent noises, and like I said in my original post I was able to get great results with it - even in Audacity. Personally I was amazed with how much of a difference it made, but of course YMMV.
stevetoney:
^ Thanks alot for this response. It really helps define the experiences you've had with these tools, as well as differentiate what didn't work. It also helps to know that you had the same experiences I had with the tools I mentioned that I've used. It's really exciting to know that there is a good tool out there for clapping!
For some reason, in my initial response I didn't key in on the fact that you were talking about the click reduction tool, not the noise reduction tool. Cool! Thanks for the tip!
F.O.Bean:
THANKFULLY! I ONLY record loud PA systems, because I only have to reduce the gain of a few claps per set, or fireworks at summer festies. I will just continue to do the individual claps ;)
bluntforcetrauma:
So if one is to " select portion of recording needing clap removal" then what do i do?
do I set hard limit?
do I use click removal for clapping?
anyone suggest steps - I know we all may use different software, for example I use PEAK with some plug ins. But instinctively they most use the same or close to the same steps they just might call the process a different name.
so after selecting section of recording that needs to decrease clapping--what would be the next steps?
would I use hard limiter first? then some sort of click removal? then envelop? of course I dont know how to use the envelop at all.
also how do you know what to set hard limit at? and how actually does one do it?
thanks
--- Quote from: candor on July 08, 2013, 02:24:50 AM ---
--- Quote from: bluntforcetrauma on July 06, 2013, 08:54:58 PM ---Great, how do you actually select a "hard limit" for clapping? What kind of db cut do you use? I use PEAK but i do have adobe audition I just never had used it.
I have been using the pencil tool in PEAK to individually lower clapping, in the attempts to lower clapping in order to have the " highest db of the recording being music and not clapping, so that when normalizing it will normalize to the sound of music and not an applause.
any help will be appreciated
i have been editing some acoustic shows and most have extended clapping after songs that are of a higher db level than any other "music " part.
--- Quote from: candor on June 29, 2013, 12:41:39 AM ---
--- Quote from: voltronic on June 25, 2013, 04:45:44 PM ---Maybe others know this already, but I just discovered a way to easily reduce the level of close-to-rig clapping without much impact to the surrounding music, making normalization easier and/or the clapping less obtrusive.
snip
Previously I would manually attenuate the applause between songs and/or edit the loudest claps individually, and then normalize. This accomplished the goal of raising the overall music level, but my edits were always very obvious and unnatural sounding. Today I was reading up on click/pop removal for vinyl transfer, and thought it might apply to this situation. The results were dramatically more natural sounding, and this process takes a fraction of the time. This would have saved me hours editing this year's concerts. :facepalm:
I tried this first in Izotope RX2, then again in Audacity. No suprise that RX2 gave me superior sounding results but you can similar results in Audacity also. Here's my process for both programs:
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I had been doing this in audacity but to get all the claps down to music levels the declick settings I had to use ended up making the applause sound have a pumping effect. After I switched to Adobe Audition I found I got better results by selecting the applause area and applying a hard limit to the section with a db cut which brought the loud claps down but left the rest untouched. This resulted in an easy way to do the same thing and a superior sounding (at least to me) result.
Hopefully this adds another tip to your post-processing bag of tricks :D
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If you look at the waveforms in your editing software, the clapping sections are distinctive. High narrow peaks - usually louder than the surrounding music or other recording. It can take a bit of trial and error, but I usually start with the hard limit at or below the peak level level of surrounding program. This way the loud claps are attenuated but the rest of the applause sounds pretty natural. I find this takes me much less time than highlighting and adjusting each clap individually and I've often got claps that all don't respond to the same click removal settings. If the overall applause is still too loud, the envelope tool is your friend.
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