Plosive sounds can completely derail a vocal, drawing your listener’s attention away from the rest of the mix or just making your compressor a nightmare to set up. Thankfully there’s an easy way to fix this in the mix, so let’s identify what are plosive sounds and how to fix them.
What Are Plosive Sounds
First let’s answer the obvious question of what are plosive sounds and why do we want to fix them.
Plosive sounds are low frequency bursts on a voice or vocal which are a product of overemphasized “P” consonant sounds from a speaker or vocalist. “P” sounds in particular send a burst of air by virtue of how our mouths enunciate them. Pop screens are used in front of a microphone to filter and stop or at least mitigate the effect of these “pops” which come from those surges of air.
Even with a pop screen, if the vocalist gets right up on the microphone via the pop screen and delivers “P” consonant sounds with a lot of energy, you can still get these on the recording.
Again and as I covered in my overview of how to EQ voice, plosives can be a problem on a recorded (speaking) voice as well as sung vocals.
As I alluded to in opening, while a compressor can be used to mitigate their effect in the mix, it makes setting the parameters of that compressor difficult with the actual vocal in mind.
And while you can put a dedicated compressor in your vocal chain to catch and attenuate these peaks which are solely a product of compression, there are better ways of dealing with them.
So how do we fix plosive sounds if we’re stuck with them on the recording?
How to Fix Plosive Sounds
As I detailed in my overview on how to remove plosives from vocals, plosive sounds are especially prominent at roughly 150Hz.
Anytime we have a problem frequency which is ONLY a problem intermittently on any track, a reactive solution like multiband compression or dynamic EQ is the answer.
150Hz is right in the low end of the body/fundamental of your voice. If you go in and gut that with say a static or conventional EQ cut, you’ll be universally thinning out that vocal or voice indiscriminately.
This strips that voice of its fullness, depth, and overall just makes it sound thin and weak.
If we make that cut a DYNAMIC cut, meaning it only attenuates at 150Hz when we get an unnatural spike there (which only comes from a plosive), we get to leave 150Hz untouched for the 99% of the time it’s not an issue:
Setting a dynamic EQ (check out my overview on the best free dynamic EQ) band at 150Hz and setting its threshold so that you get 5dB or so reduction at the worst instance of that plosive has a nice moderate effect on the rest of the plosives of that vocal.
The beauty of this solution is again that 99% of the time, the vocal is now left alone.
During those rare instances where the plosive sounds cause a surge at 150Hz, the threshold is exceeded and consequently that band pulls down in response to that surge.
The result is that the listener doesn’t realize there’s a plosive there, and the low end of the vocal or voice remains intact.
If you find that you still have a problem with plosive sounds, you might follow that dynamic EQ up with a multiband compressor. Like with using multiple compressors, you can drive two different dynamics-based plugins in a row with more conservative settings to potentially get a more transparent and better sounding outcome.
Speaking of which, check out my other situational uses for dynamic EQ in your mix to ensure that you’re only cutting (or boosting) when you have a problem/as necessary to keep your vocal and your entire mix sounding much more natural (and much better).
