Click Track Can Be Heard When Overdubbing

Hello. I’m using Audacity 2.1.0 to make my first song recording. I’ve generated a click track in Audacity which is played back through my Sony MDR-XB950 headphones worn by my singer whilst she sings into my Blue Yeti USB microphone. Unfortunately, the click track can be heard on the song track. I’ve tried turning down the gain on the microphone but the click track sound still appears to seep out of the headphones. Can anybody advise please. Thank you in anticipation.

You can’t use just any headphones. They have to be “sealed” and they have to fit well against the head. The classic yellow Sennheiser HD414s…
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…and the cheap Sony’s I bought in Hawaii
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…would be terrible at this.

The Koss Pro-4AAs would work well, but they’re heavy. They make a Pro3 as well. Behringer makes several in a series. I have the Behringer HPS3000. They seem to work well. It doesn’t say they’re sealed and they have small vents in the rear, so I’m not sure.

Sony MDR-7506 is widely recognized in the film industry and you’ll find a pair of them on any movie set. They’re sealed. There’s a set gracing David Greene’s head in the NPR-West studios.

Sennheiser makes some good larger ones, too.

No matter who you use for the illustration, the headphones are large, soft and gooshy to properly isolate the sound.

That’s the good news. Wrap the headphones in a towel and put them under the chair so they can’t possibly transmit sound to the microphone, but don’t change anything else. If you still have click track, you may be making it yourself. Audacity > Edit > Preferences > Recording: [_] Playthrough should not be checked. Make sure you’re recording the microphone or microphone system and not Stereo Mix or other “fake” device.

More good news. If the performer is functionally deaf, the pathway through her throat may be creating the sound. This happens a lot with older performers. “Can you turn the cans up louder?”

I don’t know of a really good way around that.

Koz

That’s really helpful, thank you. I had wondered if the faint noise of click track that ‘leaked’ out from the headphones and into the recording could be treated as background noise to be removed later. I might give that a try but Im guessing not.

I had wondered if the faint noise of click track … could be treated as background noise to be removed later

I sure doubt it. Noise Reduction is good with steady-state background noises that never change. Conversations, traffic noises, planes going over, TV in the background, restaurant music and other sounds that change constantly are pretty much permanent.

You can try it, but remember step one in Noise Reduction is the Profile step where you drag-select a high-quality sample of the work you want to remove. What do you sample on the click track? If somebody had a gun and told me to force this to work, I would edit together many clicks close to each other and use that as the Profile, and then mess with Noise Reduction settings until I got the least worse result.

I have gone to very serious lengths to get a quiet recording so I didn’t have to deal with Noise Reduction later. I shot a voice for a production and the only place available was a large industrial floor. No machines, but the place had air conditioning rumble. I found the one small spot on the large floor where the rumble echo from the walls cancelled out and we shot right exactly there.

You can probably think of tests you can do. Just have the performer open and close her mouth and listen to the volume of the clicks. Does it help when she pushes the ear muffs against her head. Does it change? People with problems only want the problem to go away, but troubleshooters are looking for any change, better or worse. All changes help you identify the problem.

As I posted, is it still there if you intentionally isolate the headphones? Is there a sneak pathway inside the computer?

And since you’re on Windows, have you turned off all the Windows Voice Processing?

http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/faq_recording_troubleshooting.html#enhancements

Koz