Audio Engineering: Plosives and EQ Correction

Plosive, EQ, and Level Issues

 

Here’s the problem: A live-event recording has a severe plosive issue, sounds muddy, and is under level, which makes the uneven dynamic range problematic.

ORIGINAL RECORDING 

THE FIX 

Using iZotope RX7, the following repairs were applied:

  • EQ: Rolled-off top and bottom end using steep HPF around 100Hz and a LPF at 16kHz (typical starting point for repair work)
  • De-plosive: Applied several passes of heavy de-plosive effect
  • Spectral repair:  Selectively applied spectral repair attenuate effect to remaining plosive problem areas
  • De-click and De-crackle: Applied passes of these effects to mitigate remaining distortion areas
  • EQ: Cut a few dBs from lower mid-range around 200Hz, boosted upper mid-range around 3-4kHz
  • Voice de-noise: Applied 3dB of noise reduction to help clean up the audio
  • Using Audacity: Applied compression 3:1 ratio at around -12dB.