REAPER 201: Removing vocal plosives

REAPER 201 is a series of articles for intermediate users to accomplish specific production tasks.

This tutorial will explain how to easily tame or remove excessive p-popping on a dialog track using an Equalizer and item FX.

Removing vocal plosives

Often while working with voice recordings, you come across “plosives”, short puffs of air that causes the microphone to distort. Pop-filters and windscreens help to reduce the issue at the source but this isn’t always enough and they’ll need to be removed in post-production.

In REAPER this is a quick and easy task to accomplish thanks to item FX.

Here is a short clip of some dialog. There are two P’s in the phrase and the first one puffs into the mic too much.

BEFORE EXAMPLE

plosives isolated in audio waveform

Pops are easily identifiable in an audio waveform. Split the item before and after the plosive. Make sure aut0-crossfades are active. Don’t select much more than the spiky part.

problem plosive split

If the Item FX buttons are not visible, navigate to the Appearance/Media preferences to activate.

Enable FX buttons for media items

Click the item FX button for the isolated plosive and insert ReaEQ.
Set band 1 to High Pass type and Frequency to 140Hz. This is a good starting point.
Save this as an FX Chain named “Remove Pop”.

ReaEQ settings. Save this as FX-Chain

Now, whenever a pop appears in an item, just make two quick cuts, right-click the FX button and select the ‘remove pops’ chain. Done in about 3 seconds.

right-click item FX button to access FX-chain

Here’s the dialog after fixing the pop and how the waveform appears if glued.

AFTER EXAMPLE

pop removed and glued