Question for the Voiceover Artists....

Feb 17, 2011

Oh Vocally-Gifted colleagues, I have a question.....

Sometimes, when going through my recordings to edit/add effects etc., I am aware of a small, randomly inserted "ticking/clicking" sound. It does not occur in any specific way, it just seems to be a randomly occurring annoyance.

It's not environmental, or produced by my voice, just a pronounced click, like the first "k" sound in the word "kick". I just cut and re-record around it and life is good until I get it again.

I use NCH Wavepad Sound Editor, and spotted a "Click Pop" icon, (which I cannot get to work, it keeps on telling me it cannot select anything this small manually...), anyway.....

Is there a name for this, is it something that is well-known? Is it a feature of NCH (just joking..).

Any help on what to do about it, or even why it might be happening would be appreciated.

For the record I am recording with Samson Q1U with Pop-filter, all in a HarlanHogan PortaBooth, (when the cat is not in there....), at 44100 mono.

Thank shallot

Bruce

7 Replies

Brian Allen
Hero

13 years ago02/17/11 at 4:25 am (UTC)

Not sure who "shallot" is, or why I should be thanking him/her, but... (just kidding Bruce!)

Seriously, on the audio issue, is the "click" anomaly something that may randomly appear in one recording out of 10, or is it pretty common to get a little click in just about every recording? If it's a pretty regular occurrence, then it would be easy to start changing one part of your set up at a time until you isolate what is causing the problem. Try a different sound recorder, even if it is a trial version of something, then try a different mic, etc.

Steve Flowers

13 years ago02/17/11 at 4:43 am (UTC)

One thing you might try, Bruce. Sounds like you might be running into a background process kicking in and mucking up your capture stream. Might try focusing there and looking for unneeded things you might shutdown during recording. Like an anti-virus scan or other intermittently triggered software process. Some digital recording software will cache a bit more to memory before writing to disc. For those that don't any hiccup will cause an audio bobble.

Andy Bowyer

13 years ago02/17/11 at 5:30 am (UTC)

It could be system resources taking momentary priority over your recording program for a moment here and there--in my old studio computer, for example, if my virus scan software decided to do an update while I was recording I would end up with sentences that "sounded" like this:

"When _ou are bui___g an eLearnin_ _ourse, _ere are som_ ___gs to _em__ber."

This was a rare occurrence, but it was known to happen.

I think a more likely culprit could be simple mouth noise. Random clicks can appear in your narrations out of nowhere because of too much saliva, not enough saliva, that kind of thing. Keeping a glass (or cup...or bottle) of room-temperature water nearby as you're narrating can make a *huge* difference in this, believe me.

Still, it's very possible you're dealing with something far more technical than that. If you like, send me an example of what you're dealing with, and I'll see if I can give you a better answer.

Steve Flowers

13 years ago02/17/11 at 6:12 am (UTC)

Expanding on Andy's advice for a glass of water, I've seen some narrators actually like to narrate with a piece of hard candy or a cough drop in. Seems counterintuitive to me, but I suspect it's to balance hydration from saliva stimulation. I don't like to narrate my own stuff - but will under duress

Andy Bowyer

13 years ago02/17/11 at 6:16 am (UTC)

Hard candy? Really? I should think that would cause more problems with diction and noise (the candy hitting the teeth, for example) than anything else. But I've heard stranger things. One studio I read about keeps a bowl of greasy, salty potato chips in the studio--it's supposed to lubricate the mouth or something.

They just make me fat.