Distorted vocals

[midphase]

Sorry about the off topic but it seems like I'm not the only one and nobody seems to ever answer on the other forum subsections.

I have to clean up some vocals with some analog distortion.

Does anyone have any good tricks or tips on how to get rid or at least minimize the distortion on a vocal track? I'm trying to EQ it out, but it really seems to dull the sound, anybody have some weird trick that can help?

Thanks!

[FV]

Hi midphase,

I've never found anything to be very successful in removing unwanted distortion from tracks. Only weird trick I have is to re-cut the offending parts (assuming you can match the signal chain again) or to accept the distortion and try to make the track sound as if you had intended it. Granted, if it is a sweetly sung vocal and the track is meant to be pretty, the latter will be much more difficult.

Good luck solving your problem.

FV

[Bruce A. Richardson]

Funny. I was about to suggest giving it the Sylvia's Mother approach. Lemonade from lemons.

Sometimes a de-clicker will take out a bit of it, but the results are no better.

If the singer's not dead, re-track. It's the cheapest alternative.

[seanmccoy]

As mentioned above, don't waste your time trying to fix analog distortion. Digital overloads can often be cleaned up using something like Sound Forge's "Clipped Peak Restoration," or other noise reduction since the clipped waveforms are recognizable and either removable or re-drawable. But analog distortion is integrated into the original recording, and the distortion is not digitally distinguishable from the clean signal. If you can't have it resung, distort it more or put a phone EQ on it.

[midphase]

Thanks for all the advice. I suspected that there's not much to do about it.

It's actually not a song but (you guessed it) location dialogue. For the record, I did not record it. I found some mild improvement running it through Waves' XCrackle but it's really not making the problem go away as much as reducing the most offending parts by about 10%.

This is not something that could be easily ADR'd so I'm just going to be the bearer of bad news and tell the film makers that...they're S.O.O.L. and perhaps the only lesson to be learned here is not to skimp on location audio budgets!

[seanmccoy]

perhaps the only lesson to be learned here is not to skimp on location audio budgets!

Amen! Sometimes I wonder if directors think we audio post guys prefer showing off our magical skills in trying to salvage crap, to making great sounding mixes from pristine sources.

[kid-surf]

Film guys think you can run everything through some magical "filter".... ;)

It's amazing how little some of them know about audio....


KID-

[JonFairhurst]

Maybe you could replace the dialogue with a vocal part from Voices of the Apocalypse. It might be tough to understand the words, but at least it wouldn't be distorted. :)

-Jon Fairhurst

[SWL]

X-Crackle will remove some ... but not the woofy-ness you get when things over modulate.

I just finished posting a Doc. where all interview subjects had the lav mic placed under their shirt ..... so with every movement there is fizz from 4-8k. Of course, they expected me to be the messiah of de-noising. Well, they just got dull sounding subjects, it was that or a constant sound of bacon frying.