0555 – Mic Muck-Ups Solved!: Popping Ps

2022.07.09 – 0555 – Mic Muck-Ups Solved!: Popping Ps

Plosives (or: ‘pops’)

This is the name for the small blast of air that hits the microphone when someone says words starting with the letter ‘p’. Put your hand in front of your mouth and say: “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers / A peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked” or “Peter Rabbit’s burrow”. Microphones are sensitive to these sounds in a similar way and the rush of air can cause a distortion of the sounds to the listener either live or on a recording. (You’ll remember we looked at plosives and how they are formed way back, in the section on diction.)

It is difficult to fix this kind of distortion in a recording, but you could try reducing the level of that millisecond, removing it altogether or (like several of these problems) running that section of audio through an audio production program such as https://www.izotope.com/  

You can cut the chances of this happening in the first place by:

·     Wear headphones so you know it is happening and you can take steps to stop it

·     Saying such sounds a little more softly

·     Backing away from the microphone

·     Turning the microphone at an angle so you are not speaking directly into it

·     And having a ‘pop shield’ in front of the mic - whether one of gauze attached to the outside of the mic, or foam slipped over the mic’s head.

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