Dealing with unwanted headphone bleed into recorded tracks

[Jadoube]

I am looking for a fresh approach or something new that I've not heard of before.

The Situation.

• My artist wants to radically remix a full band track... the key point being she wishes to remove the band and critically; the drums.
• Re-recording tracks is NOT an option. Just "no, can not do that"
• the drums are bleeding through on BG vocal and keyboard tracks. Thankfully, the lead vocal is ok. (For the record... I didn't cut these tracks! )

Currently.
She is ok with the level of bleed... I am not. You need to listen closely on headphones to hear the drums coming through. I have taken drastic steps to minimize the situation... but being a recording engineer... it's all I hear... little pips of drums... waaaaay back there somewhere.....ARRGG!

• Tight edits of the tracks and aggressive fades of the snippets into reverb to minimize exposure.
• Using the RX5 de-noise shaped expander/gate to go after the gack.
• RX5 Declicker to loose some transients.
• Minimal compression to not raise the bleed into the mix.

Anyway.... anyone else have any thoughts? Tricks that have worked for you?

I thought about pumping some out of phase drums into the offending tracks to try and cancel it out... but I would have to match the dynamics and my head spins thinking about it.
As I was typing this out I thought I will try some severe notch filters. Might get away with automating that in.

Again.... I am forced to deal with it and the situation is such that I have to suck it up and make the best of it.

Thanks in advance! Maybe it's just pints at the pub...

[Kwackman]

Have you seen the newly released RX6 feature? Made for you!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_IR31hwkpc

[Jadoube]

Have you seen the newly released RX6 feature? Made for you!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_IR31hwkpc

DAMNIT! You are right... and I just upgraded to RX5!! D'oh!

[Jadoube]

Have you seen the newly released RX6 feature? Made for you!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_IR31hwkpc

DAMNIT! You are right... and I just upgraded to RX5!! D'oh!

Well, I upgraded to RX6... anything to get this problem solved and water under the bridge. Nice that today of all days is the release day of RX6.... I guess they saw me coming; credit card in hand!! I have to say; I love the RX suite of products. Don't boot your DAW without them! It's a no brainer for me to upgrade this product... I have never regretted any RX money spent. I'll report back tomorrow when I give it a go later today.

[Martin Walker]

Well, I upgraded to RX6..t's a no brainer for me to upgrade this product... I have never regretted any RX money spent. I'll report back tomorrow when I give it a go later today.

Wow - just watched the YouTube teaser for the new De-bleed feature, and I'm impressed. Looking forward to hearing your reaction to it Jadoube.

Fingers crossed that it works in your particular application (I guess the success of the algorithm must depend on how constant the bleed sound is - click track bleed as demonstrated there must be far easier to eliminate than your drum bleed).

Martin

[Jadoube]

Fingers crossed that it works in your particular application (I guess the success of the algorithm must depend on how constant the bleed sound is - click track bleed as demonstrated there must be far easier to eliminate than your drum bleed).
Martin

True enough... I have the tracks pretty good right now. Laymen -> good enough, Hopefully, this little gadget will hide it enough for me to sleep soundly when the master tape goes out the door. Right now it's at the "I begged to recut the track... but lost that argument" stage. (It would be years before I could listen to the track without gnashing my teeth in pain.) I'm optimistic the latest RX stuff should get me that last little bit.
I have become a huge fan of Izotope in the last year. I've always liked the RX products; removing scratchy noises from a poorly recorded Banjo track was a previous highlight. I have been enjoying the Neutron plugin immensely since it came out... I'd almost call it a guilty pleasure. They seem to have this FFT spectrum filter thing (if that's what it is....) zeroed in... Good stuff!

[Jadoube]

Well... I tried to use the De-Bleed plugin.
As suspected Martin, not so easy a problem to conquer when it's band bed tracks bleeding in...
Basically one uses a trigger track to create the filter to remove the offending noise. And it must be a "time aligned" track of course. (Not a dissimilar idea to one of my thoughts of trying to cancel the sound out with a phase shifted track...)
I think this would work 100% better if RX provided a workspace to help you find that time alignment. I seemed to be missing something fundamental; There is no easy way that I found to get it to sit. I admit I have not done any RTFM... I'll have a look at that this evening.

[Martin Walker]

Shame - let's hope the manual sheds some more light on possibilities.

Do keep us informed of developments!

Martin

[Jadoube]

What I find odd is it doesn't even sound terrible... it just seems to be nothing. I watched the video... seems like it should be doing something! I'll report back when I have had some time to muck about. Makes me think it's my problem and not the software... I am very much a turn it up and see what blows kind of guy.... and I have nothing.