Getting rid of click bleed

[Hope209]

Does anyone know how to get rid of click bleed? Does recording the click to an audio track and then inverting it's phase work?

[JonCraig]

nope. remember that your source is a distance from the mic when you get the click bleed. the only way play with it would be to have the singer stand in front of the mic again, record a dummy track of just click (bleeding through the headphones on the singer's head).

however, it will be a different day, the relative humidity will have changed (affecting the speed of sound and the response of your room & mic capsule), and it still probably won't work too well.

so... how do you get rid of click bleed? don't get any in the first place. use "shooter can" type headphones for drummers, acoustic players, etc. etc.

--jon

[Rodney Gene]

Lot's of click bleed on great albums and radio...always has been.

Whatever it takes to get the take...!

Much Respect,

[John Suitcase]

What instrument is it on? If it's on vocals, is it only audible during pauses? If so, you'll just have to go in and edit them out, or reduce gain on them until they're inaudible.

You could try dropping a percussion track of some sort over it, might make it blend a little.

If you're working on a quiet acoustic song, and there's click on the guitar and vocal tracks, you may have to retrack.

If it's a rock tune, and the click is only on, say, the drum tracks, and only audible during breaks, I'd try to find the offending mic and selectively mute it.

I'd give more ideas, but I'd need to know more about the situation.

[MATTI]

Algorithmix reNOVAtor and similiar. The phase trick might work to some extend but
as the bleed isn´t the same as the clean click... they won´t cancel as much as wanted.
Matti

[DeeDrive]

I've have fairly good luck trying to use EQ to filter it out. If it's a pretty simple click sound, such as a triangle or sine wave, you can find the fundamental freq. using a spectrum analyzer, and then use a notch filter to take out that freq. Just make sure you're using the tightest Q possible, and you should have nearly no affect on the sound. Keep in mind this will only really make the click quieter, probably not get rid of it all together.

[mitchell]

This probably won't help you much now, but yeah, the trick is to not have it the first place. When setting levels, I always ask ask the perfromer how much they need. Vocalists usually don't care anyway. Where it gets tricky is with isolated quiet acoustic guitar sections. Again, I try to make it as quiet as the performer will let me, and when they hit that sustained final chord, I immediately turn off the click (make a hot key for it!). I'm so paranoid that I do this out of habit with all instruments when I'm tracking, even DI bass.

Sometimes singers are deaf and want everything blazing, but they're usually pretty cool when you explain that the click's gonna end up on the track.

And any kind of sealed headphones help a HUGE amount... AKG K240's are BAD for this and bleed a bunch, but they make a whole bunch of inexpensive closed ones.

mitchell

[frans]

Isolation headphones - a total must for drummers (keeps the thunder of the drums out of their ears so they actually hear the click without volumes that shredd their eardrums) and nice for everything else. A lot of times I ran into the situation where the talent says "headphones louder, more this, more that" (already at a high level) and for educational reasons I let them...after 10 minutes or so as it will still be not better I coax them to try for all to be less louder...voila! Works 90% of the time. Don't forget that there's a treshold in hearing: too loud and you can't spot the right note... there are these little hairs in the inner ear, every section corresponding to certain frequencies - if the volume is too high, not only the hairs that SHOULD resonate to that frequency vibrate, but also those left and right. Also a good excuse for the singer on stage if they sing off key: "Maaaan, it was too loud, blahblah..." ;-)

All the above will not apply in the case of Pete Townsend. In case you too record a Hiwatt DR100 at full tilt - get the THD hotplate and set it at -8 dB. The structural integrity of the building will thank you.

[warhead]

Extreme Isolation Headphones from Direct Sound, end of story. They isolate like a mother and drummers love them because you don't have to crank them up loud while they play. It's the first pair of cans I offer most musicians, and 99% of them like them.

War

[boulty]

I agree with war here, I love my extreme isolation headphones and always offer them to the drummer. Well that was until the left cable got stood on and broke, still need to get them fixed.

[opentune]

An engineer buddy of mine was raving about this here

http://www.algorithmix.com/en/renovator.htm

Can´t tell ya if it works - haven´t checked it out. But i would prefer
the "decent headphone" solution for myself...

[danielveres]

I get the drummer to play thru the song once so i can hear the arrangement, set levels and all that, then I automate level of the clicktrack so it goes down i quiet passages and ends where the song ends etc, usualy works really good.
cheers!