Administered by:
@hazelnot@sunbeam.cityDoes anyone have any advice for recording voiceover for a video?
I'm trying to do it but I can't get rid of mouth sounds and clicks and other gross noises like that
So far I've tried moving the mic further away (didn't help, in fact it only increased the echo), drinking water, and eating lemon
Apparently this is caused by a dry mouth, but my mouth dries the second I start recording cause of public speaking anxiety (and also is just often dry for seemingly no explanation?)
Oof people are saying online that basically the only solution is to buy a more expensive mic cause there's no way of getting rid of this stuff with a condenser mic >.>
Others are saying "buy Izotope" but that also costs money and is Windows and Mac only
@hazelnot do you have an effective pop filter? you might be able to clean your initial signal a bit with a sock or a commercial pop filter as step one. Audacity probably has some plug ins that can help too
@timmy a pop filter won't really help for this, those are for plosives, I'm talking about just, my mouth making clicking sounds when I talk
@hazelnot you’re right, i guess clicks wouldn’t move enough air to be captured at all by filters
@hazelnot placing the mic above your head will help but will also pick up your room more. Dynamic microphones like the EV RE20 is less sensitive to this, a Shure SM58 is a good cheaper option - mics like these mostly reject room tone entirely so they're great in live rooms. You can probably get a less solid but even cheaper copy of a 58 that sounds fine.
In music production when the singer is using the proximity effect I edit those noises out by hand but obviously, it's a three minute recording. I do those edits in fifteen minutes ish. I recently recorded myself speaking for 20 minutes and it took over an hour to edit out every noise I didn't like.
Alas I'm aware of no plugin that does this automatically, at least not without negatively impacting the quality of the voice - but Izotope RX is probably as good as that gets.
Finally, I hear those sounds from most every youtuber on my reference speakers but in most real life listening scenarios they simply vanish into the background and just do not matter, but it's not for me to say how much quality you want.
@hazelnot my usual pipeline for clearing up vocals like that is noise gate -> compressor -> EQ (a hard high-pass at 100hz is always good)
in VST land i use Cockos' ReaPlugs for noise gate and Melda Productions' free plugins for compressor and EQ, those should run fine in Wine, otherwise i'm not sure what you could use but those would be the "generic" terms for these filters
a de-esser would also help but i've yet to find a good free one, if you do give me a shout
@hazelnot and yeah like others have said, a pop filter between you and the microphone is also essential
@mavica_again I do have a pop filter but I haven't been able to actually mount it on the arm without it just falling off by itself lol
But that wouldn't really help anyway, those are for plosives, my issue is with the fleshy sounds my mouth makes when I'm talking 
@hazelnot i found that mine helped at least a bit with those as well, but yeah not a full solution
oh also, if you get ReaPlugs you can try ReaFir, which you can use to build a noise profile and remove certain frequencies from the sound, i do that for mouse clicks which are in a range away from my voice, maybe you could try to calibrate it for mouth noises
i'm only suggesting VSTs in these cases because they're what i have experience with as i do this kind of filtering for real-time, not post
@mavica_again hm, I can't get ReaPlugs standalone cause I'm using Linux, I'd have to buy Reaper and use the whole thing
I don't know how to use any DAWs though, I didn't even know they can be used for recording voiceovers cause everyone I've seen seems to only use them to make electronic music out of samples
@hazelnot VSTs are pretty much a Windows construct yeah but they should work over Wine, the Reaper DAW is good for mastering (whether you're recording instruments or voice) but what i was suggesting is just the filters. i don't know about the Linux version of audacity but i thought the Windows version supported VSTs.
either way not something you need to worry about, a VST type filter is only important for real time filtering, and i realise now you're doing it post-recording anyway
@mavica_again I pretty much just use whatever Audacity/Tenacity comes with plugin/effects wise, but it does have I basically all of those built-in afaik lol
@hazelnot in audacity you should be able to use, i think it calls it a noise removal, if you calibrate it with a track of just your mouth sounds and then apply the removal to your voice track, it could help some. though that kind of noise removal can also make the voice sound a bit muddy depending on how you use it
@mavica_again that's the thing though, I seemingly make those sounds *while* I talk, like, my tongue will just click in the middle of pronouncing a word 
@hazelnot no i get what you mean, but if you can isolate those sounds and build a noise profile out of it, it might help eliminate some of the frequencies
at least that's the theory, it's the first thing that comes to mind that you can do for free short of changing microphones
@hazelnot every ill advised video I've ever made wishes i could help you. I think silence and subtitles may be the only way sometimes!
@dbat it's not that it's unintelligible, it just *bothers* me, especially since I don't know I'll be able to have a full background soundtrack for this video since I'm out of ideas for royalty-free stuff I could use that's not overused and the game I'm talking about has a full licensed soundtrack 
@hazelnot i feel ull be ok. Just go for it. You can always reupload!