Reducing breath noise · Fix-The-Mix™

Reducing breath noise

I've been exploring how to reduce breath noise when recording wind instruments (alto, tenor and bass recorders) and I reckon this would work pretty well for vocals too. It uses a combination of Waves DeBreath and phase inversion. Basically the process is to:

Run 2 Waves DeBreaths in series to capture the majority of noise
Use the Breath switches on DeBreath to only let the residual breath noise through
Use Utility to invert the phase and record the residual noise onto a new track
Export the residual noise track as a normalised mono track (matching the original recording) then import it back again
Cancel phase change on Utility so the original recording plays in normal phase
Play the original recording and the inverted residual noise track in together
Adjust the gain on the residual noise track down until you reach an optimal noise reduction point

I've annotated a screenshot of Ableton to help.

I'm no singer so let me know if this process works well for vocals. Any other tips on how you deal with breath noise (apart from not breathing!) would be much appreciated.

Thanks Rob

20 comments