Sometimes you get recordings where you've
got background hiss and noises that you need to get rid of,
because once you start mixing with them and applying compression,
the background noise comes up and is so audible, it's just ruining your mix.
So in this video, I'm going to show you how I tackled that in a recent mix.
Hi,
it's Sara here from Simply Mixing Dotcom, where each week I bring you simple,
practical advice to help you get better at mixing.
Welcome to the video.
This video, a slightly different format to my usual video tutorials,
but I was working on this mix and found the]is solution.
I wanted to share it with you straight away.
So I've got here a mix by a band called
Mums and Dads, and they are a collaboration band
of artists from Great Britain and from Australia.
And what I want to share with you today is how I tackled
questionable quality on a vocal recording.
So let me show you how I did it.
First of all, let me just play you this
song from the chorus so you can hear the sort of instrumentation and how
the vocals have been recorded and layered and sent to me as a group so I couldn't
unpick the vocals I had to work with them as they are.
So. Have a listen.
See, what you think,
Ok, so you get the idea,
lots of layered vocals and lots of harmonies.
The problem I'd got with this vocal is that there was a lot of background hiss.
When you're recording vocals and you're
layering track upon track upon track and you don't address any hiss problems
at that early level before you start layering them, then that just builds up
and compounds and becomes a problem in the mix.
It became apparent very early on in this mix because if I play into the verse
for you, you can actually hear the hiss coming up with the vocal.
OK, so there's definitely hiss on that vocal, and when you start to add
compression, that is just going to get louder and louder.
So the problem is
obvious there in the first verse, but it's also at the end of the song.
Take a listen to the outgoing vocal.
You can hear it underneath the instrumentation because this type
of music, there are busy sections of the song and there are more sparse sections.
And in the sparse sections, the hiss was really obvious.
OK, so you can just hear it in the background of the vocal,
but the worst place is right at the beginning, going into the first verse.
So what can we do about that?
Well, recently Accusonus sent me their ERA5 background noise removal app and this
is the perfect opportunity for me to try out.
Let me solo this vocal and just play you what I've got.
What I have applied here is a
CLA Vocals to give me some EQ and some compression.
I've also got some
standard EQ to make the vocal sound a little bit cleaner and I've also got
some De-essers, so I've got two de-essers here.
I've got one at six and a half k and I'm using another
at 2K.
And the reason for that is that the six
and a half k de-esser is going to catch the sibilance, the ss's, the T's, the 'ch
sounds and just kind of, keep a hold of them, keep on top of them.
And then the de-esser that I've got at 2K,
it's just going to stop the vocal from getting a little bit to present
and to peaky so that it's going to prevent the vocal poking out of the mix too much,
which can sometimes happen, especially with lead vocals.
When you've got one, two, three, four vocals on top of each other,
that frequency range around 2K can stand out.
So it's just there in case things start to get a little bit annoying at 2K.
So I'll close those down.
So this is what the vocal sounds like without the compression.
And then I'll play again
with the compression and you can hear exactly what the problem is.
OK, so the CLA vocals is just adding some compression, a bit of treble,
a little bit reverb, a delay and some pitch modulation.
And because this vocal was already sent
to me as a group and how the producer wanted it to sound,
all I had to work with was just this blended group.
So I didn't want to mess with that too much.
I just wanted to enhance it.
So a quick way to do that is with an all in one plugin like CLA Vocals.
So the two issues for me on this vocal
that I wanted to control is the hiss and sibilance.
And the ERA5 Bundle has two apps within it that will help me out.
If you're not familiar with the plugin, let me show you the
webpage for you there.
It's got several components or several apps, all in one.
And it's a great way to clean up vocals if
you make podcasts, if you work in video, if you work in audio.
So all the sort of common audio issues that arise in vocals are addressed here.
And they include things like
plosive remover, which is a really common thing to happen
on vocals, the de-esser and a mouth de-clicker that's going
to remove all the kind of mouth noises that you get with vocal recordings.
Then the noise removal and the noise
removal is going to be the first thing that I try.
So let's see what that sounds like.
I'm going to apply it right at the start
of the chain because to me, I like it makes sense
to remove the bad stuff before I start enhancing the good stuff.
So I'm going to pull up this ERA5 noise
remover and there is simple one knob operation.
You've got an output control here
and various focus points that you can steer the processing towards.
But full disclosure here, I've not read the manual.
I'm just going to go with this and use
my instinct and rely on how intuitive the plugin is to use it.
So.
I'm going to start off, I think, with the processing at zero
and then I'm going to bring it in to a level that I feel sounds about right.
And what I'm listening for is the control of the hiss,
but also the top end of the vocal, because with these noise reduction apps,
you can sometimes get a vocal that ends up sounding dull.
So let's see how it handles this vocal.
OK, so I've got the vocal soloed and let's see what it can do.
So even just 20 percent, that's a really significant improvement,
so I'll just bypass that and bring it back in.
You can hear.
OK, that's done a great job on the Hiss, and it's not that dull sounding either,
so I'm just gonna see how far I can go with it and find a point that works well
for the high end of the vocal and the hiss.
OK, so it sounds really good to me at 35
and it has a broad area, actually, that it sounds really good.
So it's going to be what it sounds like in the mix, I think,
and also with the de-esser that I'm going to apply here as well.
I've still got the de-essing on from the original mix,
so let's try the ERA5 De-Esser to see what that can do again.
Really easy. Lay out just that one knob operation
and an output and then different sort of style
of processing, a different way for the plug in to analyse the incoming signal.
So it's opened at 40 percent and I'm going to find a section that has some S's in it.
oK, plenty of S's there.
And also what's nice is at the bottom
of the plug in here, you can see the waveform.
So let's see how it handles those S's.
And you can see in the wave form of the plug in the areas that the de-esser
is working on is shown in green, which is really great.
So you can kind of get a visual idea of if
you're perhaps using it too much, you've got it dialled in too far.
Another area here, it's got this dif, which I'm assuming means difference.
So what we should hear here is what the de-esser is actually
working on, what the de-esser hears in order for it to turn it down.
Let's see what it is hearing.
And so what seems to be doing is it's putting the unprocessed signal
in the right channel and it's putting the difference in the left which is unusual.
I wasn't expecting that.
I'm not sure why they do that, but.
It works.
So I'm kind of happy with where that's sitting at 50 percent.
It opens at 40, 50 sounds really good to me.
So let's have a listen to this in the mix
and see how those sounds are sounding with all the other instrumentation going on.
Yeah, that's working nicely.
I'm just going to try at 50 percent and see what that sounds like.
Yeah, I think that's got a better control
on that seven seas away from me, lyric, I think that was working much better.
So that's the de-esser dialled in
at 50 percent and the noise remover dialled in at 35.
Another great feature of this plugin bundle is it's got this audio
clean-up assistant, so you can stack up four processors all
in series and have them working in different ways on one track.
So what we had going was noise removal at about 35 percent.
And then I had a de-esser that I liked at 50 percent.
And it looks as though you can save presets.
And there are some great presets in here by the look of it anyway for
podcast's ready, bedroom noise removal, all
really handy presets to get you started really quickly.
But this is what I need on this vocal and by putting it in this audio cleanup
assistant, I can bypass and un-bypass both processors at the same time.
So let's check that out,
start with it off and then I'll bring it in.
So initially you're going to hear the hiss
and then hopefully you can hear it sound a lot better
yeah, that works brilliantly well,
actually, and it's just so quick, which is always a winner for me.
So now I've got that controlled, I think we are losing a little bit of Top End.
So what I'd like to do is try and bring a little bit more back.
The noise reduction has dulled it
slightly, so I'll see if I can bring it back without bringing back hiss.
Yeah, that works fine, and I couldn't really detect any hiss
coming back, or certainly not enough for it to be a problem in the mix.
So I hope you find the video helpful.
It's kind of common these days to have a vocal file that might have some noise
on it, whether it's hiss or mouth noises or pops from plosives.
So having tools like this to hand to be
able to help you control those in the mix when it's too late to go back
and re-record them, then it's really going to help you out.
So I've only covered a couple of modules
that are available in the ERA5 in this video.
So if you want to learn more, then I'll put a link in the description
to the website so you can go straight there and check it out for yourself.
So thanks for watching.
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Thanks for watching and I'll see you next time.