This blog is really turning into me ‘getting inspired to write about something’, then not revisiting for ages. This post is an example of that, so hopefully this pops up (see what I did there?) for people searching how to fix this issue.

In radio school, I was always told by lecturers that there was absolutely nothing you can do about vocal popping in a microphone in post production. For years I looked with dismay at those little pieces of distortion creating an annoying and unprofessional sound in my interviews.

I imagine they told us this so we would simply fix our popping habits rather than fixing it in the editing stage, but I decided that it wasn’t good enough. I had a fiddle and found a way to fix them. There are a number of pop filter add ons/presets that either come with editing programs, or cost upwards of $30 each – don’t buy them. There is no need. With even free editing programs like audacity, you can recreate the settings I’ll take you through in this post.

Explanations and how to’s after the jump…

In case you don’t know what I’m talking about, I’ll briefly explain what a pop is and how to avoid them yourself… if you don’t care and want to get to the audio fixing, scroll down and look for the pictures.

What are vocal pops?

Vocal pops are caused by a strong burst of air causing momentary distortion in a microphone. For non-seasoned microphone users, this can cause a big problem in interviews and doesn’t sound very professional.

Usually the pop is caused by ‘bilabial plosives’; consonants articulated with both lips while stopping the airflow with your throat or tongue. Hence the name ‘pop’, p is the biggest offender. With some people, b can also cause issues.

If you find that you’re often popping, there are a few ways you can train your mouth to settle down on the air front. It can also make you sound less rude in conversation, as harsh p’s often come across as aggressive.

First step is to get yourself a candle, light it and hold the flame in front of your mouth where a microphone would sit. Read a p laden phrase such as:

Poppy promptly popped plenty of pennies in her purse preceding the party.

If the flame goes out, you’re popping. Light it again (don’t burn yourself) and try the p’s again, seeing if you can internalise the sound slightly with each run. Use less air and try not to blow that flame out. Keep practicing this though, because at some stage, you’ll stop thinking about it and have the speaking style come naturally.

If you need to do a read right now and can’t fix it, there is a more direct way of avoiding a pop. Right when you’re coming up to a p, turn your mouth slightly away from the microphone, directing your air stream away from it. This is a pretty difficult thing to achieve, as you don’t want the rest of the word to sound ‘off-mic’ so make sure you get your timing right and only turn your head for the popping sound itself, not the whole word.

If all else fails, do the following…

How to fix a pop in post

WordPress has made it difficult for me to display large pictures. Since this post is relatively detail driven, click and open each of these pictures to see a larger version.

In the image above, you can see a few pops within a nonsense phrase which I’ve created on purpose, listen to it here: Vocal Pops

For the sake of clarity, let’s focus on the first pop for the moment, it’s especially bad:

To fix this, we want to create an EQ filter. Most good editing programs have an equaliser, everything from garage band to audacity and protools. Different equalisers generally do the same thing in different ways. I’m using Adobe Audition and its parametric equalisation, since I’m more of a visual person. These are the settings I use in my preset:

Any brilliant EQ user would look at this thing and think it’s madness. I came to the conclusion of these settings in a time of desperation and blind fiddling, but it works. For non-seasoned EQ users, equalisation works by raising or lowering the volume of certain frequencies in a sound, making that specific pitch more or less prominent.

Basically you’re going to reduce the following frequencies, by the following amplitudes:

47 Hz: reduce by -28.4 dB

243 Hz: reduce by -5.8 dB

10368 Hz: reduce by -4.8 dB

Then, save it and if your editing program allows you to, why not create a keyboard shortcut for it so you don’t have to keep going back into the equaliser?

Now we have our preset and our pop, it’s time to fix the first pop. This is the result after isolating the distortion, then applying the filter several times:

I’ve applied it more than once because the distortion in this pop is especially severe. Keeping a milder filter gives you flexibility when approaching pops that are minor, then you can apply more if you need it.

After applying this filter to all distortion in the phrase, this is what I’m left with:

Look’s much better, huh? Sounds better too, have a listen: Fixed audio

The most important thing to remember when using this filter is that it only works on the distorted part of the recording, which is usually the air hitting the microphone. If you apply this filter to someone’s voice, it will sound terrible. However, apply as liberally as you want to air-caused sounds. Make sure you listen as you go.

If there are any questions, let me know in the comments below. Happy editing!