Recommended Software / Technique to Reduce Breathing Sounds During Interviews

[TheDingo]

...I am curious is there is a relatively painless way to reduce the breathing sounds that people make when they are recorded.

I know I can go in manually and do this, but it's hugely tedious to do this over 5 - 8 hours of audio.

I've tried tweaking the Sony Sound Forge Noise-Gate, which kind of works, but I would like something more reliable.

It doesn't have to completely eliminate the breathing sounds, just reduce them down a bit.

Thanks!

 

[ryanjf]

I feel your pain! Editing breaths out or even reducing them, to me, is a manual process since you'd have all the control. I actually still think it's the best way to go about it.

However, Waves has this: http://www.waves.com/Content.aspx?id=315

I have never used it nor ever heard how it sounds.... maybe you can be the first one?

 

[TheDingo]

Waves has this: http://www.waves.com/Content.aspx?id=315

Cool, thanks for the link.

I'll have to give the demo a whirl, and see how useful it is.

 

[Gregg Juke]

Back when I was doing broadcast radio in the analog days, recording interviews (and phone interviews) to tape, I often tried to make the segments "perfect," i.e., editing-out every breath, plosive, and "um." Later, I went for just excessive "ums." Eventually, I just tried to get the mike placement right and let the interviewee represent themsleves, if they wanted to use the verbal pause every few seconds...

It's definitely easier to get it while recording, rather than editing-out later. If you are stuck though, and working in a DAW/NLE, you can try the filters as you have-- hit or miss. Or you could pain-stakingly edit, or volume envelope all of the offending areas.

A third way though, that might get passable results, and is in-between leaving it completely alone and making an edit every few seconds, would be to try and find the most egregious frequency with your particular interviewee's breaths, and use a parametric EQ with a narrow Q, and try to zoom-in on the breath sound and take that frequency (or frequencies) out. It will not get rid of every shred of breath sound, but it could help to mitigate the situation quite a bit. You just sort of scroll/scrub through the frequency range with a boosted, very narrow Q, and listen for where the breath sounds the absolute worst. Then just do the opposite, and cut that frequency right out.

GJ