Audio Repair 101: Plosives in Audio & Video Recordings

For even more protection, pop filters can be added to the microphone and/or halfway between the speaker and the microphone. These consist of a dense, mesh material that slips on over the microphone, or is suspended on a flexible arm that attaches to the microphone stand. This mesh restricts the forceful movement of air while allowing vibrations to pass through. A less orthodox method which was mentioned in the sibilance article is the pencil trick. If you attach a pencil vertically in front of the diaphragm with a rubber band, plosives will split in half and be driven around the diaphragm. 

By employing all of these methods together, you can very well eliminate 99% of your plosive problems. Like I said, knowledge and a few inexpensive tools would be all you need. But what if a few of these plosives pass through your defenses and ruins a perfect take that is too good to do over?

Dealing with Plosives In The Mix

Removing plosives in the mix stage is not an ideal place to be. With sibilance, the harsh “s” sound can be made without saying another letter after it. The “b” and “p” are dependent on other letters to be pronounced. When you try to say one by itself, the best you can manage is a short vowel like “buh” with it. What this means in the mix stage is that any destructive editing will result in partially removing the vowel sound right after the plosive. These innocent bystanders are needed for clear speech. Cutting out too much will result in an unnatural, muffled sound that may be worse than the plosive, itself. For this reason, I wouldn’t recommend just adding in a volume fade. General volume adjustments are blind to frequency. They affect the whole spectrum, and they will destroy some parts of the audio that are still valuable. 

With this in mind, it’s best to find ways that can keep the following word intact as much as possible. One way to do that is to zero in on the frequency range that is causing the problem. Since the plosive produces mid to low frequencies, there’s a good chance that those frequencies are separate from the frequencies that the rest of the speech takes place in. To reduce the plosive, cut out a few dB’s at a time from between 250Hz to 700Hz with an EQ. To get really fancy, you can automate this reduction to happen just before the plosive so that you don’t lose this frequency range for the rest of the track.