Crackling sounds when laughing etc.

Hi guys

Laying on my knees here, crying out for help.

So my friend and I recorded the two first episodes of our podcast with clip-on mics and everything went great.
Now we’ve gotten access to a recording studio where we’ve been recording another two episodes - but now we’re having a whole lot of sound troubles.

When recording with the new equipment we’re experiencing crackling sounds whenever we’re laughing, our voices are reaching a high pitch etc. Here is an example (about 0:04): https://www.dropbox.com/sh/9heaeyqe95we2aw/AAAT788R_By79fnpTF-UdUD7a?dl=0

I was hoping that i would be able to hard limit my way out of it, but it doesn’t seem to be the case.
Do you guys know a way to fix this problem?

Your crackling problem is called digital clipping … https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipping_(audio)#Digital_clipping

Paul-L’s De-clicker plugin for Audacity can remove the worst of it …


de-clicker settings used.png

Thanks!

It’s doing an amazing work on the example - i can’t hear any crackling sounds at all.

Unfortunately it doesn’t sort out all of the crackling sounds when i’m using the plug-in on the whole recording.
Here is an example where i have a hard time making it sound bearable: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/xtm1fkm4ktgi2jv/AADOK9R4ax77KBYDrWH2mQaea?dl=0

I’ve tried to adjust the different settings/parameters in the plug-in but I can’t get rid of the clipping…
Could you advise me in which settings i should be adjusting to optimize the de-clicking?

You have digital-clipping, the clipped samples change sign: >1 becomes -1.
The De-Clicker plugin can’t repair that smoothly.

The only way I know of fixing that type of clipping on Audacity is manually repairing each clipped section individually …

which will take a long time.

Now we’ve gotten access to a recording studio where we’ve been recording another two episodes

With a recording engineer? Who set your sound levels? High recording sound levels is what produces clipping and high volume distortion. As you’re finding, that’s super hard to fix. During clipping, the microphone system stops following the show. The only way to “fix” that is to make up new sound and hope it fits. That’s what Clip Fix and those other tools do. That’s why if the distortion is bad enough, you shoot it over.

You also violated a studio convention. Did you check the first show before you started the second one?

At the end of the first performance, roll the show back and spot check play it here and there for sound quality. If you’re in Audacity, set View > Show Clipping to ON. That will give you red marks in the timeline at all the damage points. You don’t even have to listen through the whole show.




Koz

Thanks! I’ll give it a try.

It’s a recording studio at my school so we’re responsible for all the settings ourselfs.
My friend and co-host has some experience with recording radio but obviously he didn’t get it all right this time.
We’ll make sure to do some testing next time so that we don’t run into the same problem!

This is also happening to me when making a podcast for a class assignment! :frowning:

What is?
Does Koz’s suggestion resolve the problem?