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Vocal clipping fix during mixing


Dazzla

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I messed up by recording vocals with the gain on high for 1 section of a song. Not that part of clipping. The other sections of the vocals are alright. What can I do to control the clipping for that section. 

Ive tried to utilise tdr nova EQ with the threshold function on because I thought it would help in compressing the frequencies causing clipping. But it seems that the offending frequencies are widespread over the high end. 

I know the right way if to re record the track but that bit an option now. 

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11 hours ago, Dazzla said:

I messed up by recording vocals with the gain on high for 1 section of a song. Not that part of clipping. The other sections of the vocals are alright. What can I do to control the clipping for that section. 

Ive tried to utilise tdr nova EQ with the threshold function on because I thought it would help in compressing the frequencies causing clipping. But it seems that the offending frequencies are widespread over the high end. 

I know the right way if to re record the track but that bit an option now. 

If it's a small section, best advice I can give is to go back and re-record that section.  There are plugins that will use trickery to mitigate some of the damage, but in my experience they never quite sound natural. If it's a very short portion, like a one word, or a couple of words, and the project isn't going for commercial/major label release, then maybe just clip gain it down to match the other phrases in that section and call it a day. 

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As long as the audio wasn't clipped during recording (i.e., it was not clipped at the interface) and you are only seeing it from FX during mixing, you can isolate that section of audio (split it at both ends), then use clip gain (CTRL-mouse drag down) to reduce the gain on that region specifically to make it better match prior sessions.

But if that was clipped by the interface during recording (i.e., the 24-bit audio written to disc), then re-recording is a better consideration.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I'm going to wee-wee into the windstorm here and remind that the OP said that re-recording is NOT an option. Maybe the vocalist is no longer available, maybe the OP doesn't have a TARDIS, whatever.

I don't know of any freeware plug-ins that are designed to do "de-clipping," but there are commercial ones, the first that comes to mind is iZotope RX. They're all pretty pricey.

So the thing is to weigh the cost. Is it worth it to buy an expensive plug-in to fix this one track (presumably you won't make the same mistake in the future)?

Another option is a free demo. iZotope's products do have free demo periods, so you could get RX on that basis and test it out on this problematic track.

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Interesting the OP posted in the song forum about this same date and never replied there either. Must either forgot they posted this or are just indifferent to our replies.
They visited the forum last Saturday? 

I guess we can go check out their song and see if it’s clipping ?

Edited by John Vere
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