VO-BB - 20 YEARS OLD!

Deirdre · Posted: Sat Aug 08, 2009 3:46 pm Post subject: What the hell is this?

http://www.voiceassets.com/Coop/CenturyTel-snip.mp3

Right at the end of the word "Century" is a little tiny pop that I didn't hear while I recorded it and isn't a mouth noise problem.

I get these from time to time in my recordings.
I have all my gear plugged into a power conditioner.
The furnace is off, so that electric motor isn't making any spikes.

It's driving me mad— I have to redo stuff in narrations that is otherwise fine— I can't always edit it out. Sometimes it doesn't show in the wave form and I can't isolate it with the scrub wheel.

Frack!!

Here's the wave form for this snippet.

Here's the snap, highlighed and the wave form view cranked.

I am up a creek. There's no George Whittam around here.
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flaspots · Contributore Level V Joined: 14 Feb 2008 Posts: 191

You've not alone on this one, I get the same thing from time to time.

Often, it shows up not as a spike, but a corruption of the up- or down-slope on a waveform, when you view it at sample level, and what's worse, it will replicate itself over several cycles, so attempting to edit it out will cause an audible drop in the syllable.

If you can edit it, I have found that setting the system to find the nearest zero-crossing points will help keep other artifacts from showing up due to making the cut point on the up- or down-swing of the waveform.

If not, I do two or three rereads on the line that's damaged, find a timbre match, then replace only the word or syllable that's been corrupted.

ballenberg · Posted: Sat Aug 08, 2009 6:19 pm Post subject:

I'm searching here--do you mean the tiny visible line at the very beginning of the word Tel ?

Michael Schoen · Posted: Sat Aug 08, 2009 7:56 pm Post subject:

Db

You can get rid of it by zooming into the file and isolating the click. Don't erase it, but lower the isolated click by about 50--to--80-percent to make it inaudible.
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Lance Blair · M&M Joined: 03 Jun 2007 Posts: 2281 Location: Atlanta

Does this happen with the RE20 or the C1 or both?

Any wireless devices in the area such as phones or blackberries?

Your power is conditioned, but are your cable runs near anything that could interfere?

These are all just guesses...good luck.
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Deirdre · Posted: Sat Aug 08, 2009 8:38 pm Post subject:

It's the C-1.
I don't know if I get it with the RE20, to be honest. I mostly use the C1 these days because most of the stuff I'm doing is narration.

Billy Bal— it's not that single line, the noise is right in line with where the little blue cursor is in the first picture.

I've got all my cables separated, sound from electrical, and if they have any tangency, it's at right angles.

GAH.
Andrew— I'm glad I'm not the only one. In fact, I saw this very thing happen at Technicolor. A "gomper" on playback.
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Dan-O · The Gates of Troy Joined: 17 Jan 2005 Posts: 1638

Hi Deirdre,

There is actually three clicks in a row.

I am not much of an expert, however, it sounds like a static discharge of some sort.

Lance Blair · M&M Joined: 03 Jun 2007 Posts: 2281 Location: Atlanta

I agree with Dan-O. Power the preamp down, disconnect both ends of your XLR and "reboot".
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ballenberg · Posted: Sun Aug 09, 2009 5:10 am Post subject:

Okay, I can hear it only with headphones--so it's really very minor to my ears. But my take on it is that it's not a technical issue, that it's really just some of the tiny sounds we get when we're speaking into a microphone.

A tiny saliva or nasal glitch that certain letters or letter combinations bring out, never audible in conversation, only in the super-amplified mic'd world. Here there's a "ree" and a hard "t" sound smack up against each other--I think that sometimes little nasal glitches like that can sound static-y. And editing or doing a re-take if it bothers you, is about the only thing that can be done.

Philip Banks · Posted: Sun Aug 09, 2009 5:35 am Post subject:

It's the sound of a human being talking.

"Can someone listen to this, I'm saying successful business and it sounds really essy?"

Well, you would wouldn't you?

Someone commented on a video I posted somewhere that he could hear me pop. I didn't remember hearing anything so a listened carefully. Sadly, the letter P sounded like me making the sound of ...A LETTER P. The difference between P as in Pound and P as in "did someone just slam a Saab door" is like when is a door not a door? Only it's ajar and in our case it's when it doesn't jar.

If you sound like a human being talking and are able to do it without jarring, that's a good thing. Madam, you do not jar.

ballenberg · Posted: Sun Aug 09, 2009 5:47 am Post subject:

Proving that Philip and sometimes do actually agree. In fact, we're having lunch today.

On different continents. Smile

Deirdre · Posted: Sun Aug 09, 2009 5:50 am Post subject:

Thanks to all who wrote here and off-bard!

If I see this again today, I'll post an instance.
A number of folks have suggested it's associated with my pronunciation of the letter "T" in "Tel", but that little click shows up in completely random places.

Let's see what today brings after I air out my cables.

Does Pro Tools have a "snap to Zero crossing" kind of command?
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Philip Banks · Posted: Sun Aug 09, 2009 6:09 am Post subject:

bransom · DC Joined: 06 Nov 2008 Posts: 650 Location: St. Louis, MO

I had similar clicks and crackles turn up in recordings and traced it back to latency problems with my Tascam interface and Windows. A couple of processes were apparently interfering with the audio driver.

Deirdre · Posted: Sun Aug 09, 2009 6:44 am Post subject:

That will most certainly not be the problem here.
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