This is something I have never really solved:

Oftentimes when recording a live concert, the mics are quite close to the audience, especially in spaces where the audience is close to the performers. While leaving headroom for the actual performance is no problem when recording at high bit depth, catering for the applause would sometimes require much more of it. How do you solve this? Put a limiter into the recording chain? Any recommendations?

I record MKH30/30 Midside so my main pair always has plenty of hall and audience.
Never been a problem, as I leave plenty of headroom and hate limited applause, it should be natural as any other component.
It vital to get gain staging right.
Roger

The way I solve this is to have every channel of preamping (Grace or Sytek or Whathaveyou) running through a Presonus CL44 before it hits the HD24xr, which gives you compression as it approaches the limit you set and limiting at that limit. (I use the "optical" setting which somehow seems to focus the excess sound nicely.)

And then, it's always necessary in post to dip the master level when the applause comes around. In "sedate" cases, I let the applause hit -12, and in "enthusiastic" ones, -6.

If you ever submit material to Performance Today on NPR, they have a whole discussion of how applause should appear: not too loud, not too soft, but "just right."

Rig a secondary pair of more optimally gain-staged omnis that just capture the audience?

I limit like hell just on the applause part in post-production, or sometimes I just ride the gain down by hand in post.

I'll say that using the Jecklin disc is kind of a win compared with using a cardioid pair, because you can get a similar image to the cardioid pair placed farther back. Putting the Jecklin pair way up front reduces the audience noise. Not just the applause but also the coughing and candy unwrapping and so forth. And it is totally unusable with any room problems; it exaggerates room issues far more than the ORTF pair.
--scott

I've never been able to hear clipping during appause so I just adjust it in post. Sometimes they start clapping early before the sound decays but even in that case it usually takes a couple seconds before it reaches its full enthusiastic volume so that provides a window to adjust.

I always simply use gentle gain-riding; I too can't stand the sound of limiters on applause. Requires practice to drop the level slowly enough to not 'chop off' the room sound, and still have the level lowered by the time the applause begins to rise.

i suggest to ride gains or to split mains: on the split channels, use lower gain settings, dynamic processing if feasible and/or ride faders (post fader direct outs) if using a desk; when mixing, if not adjusting levels manually, ducking mains by ambis works best imo - i consider crowd noise/applause to be a 'source' as any other instrument and hence almost always use ambis which serve multiple purposes; as 'organic' efx, to feed artificial efx and to pick up applause...

Normally with the small ensembles I record and the contemporary nature of the music (mostly new compositions) there is a considerable lag at the end of the performance , plenty of time for a manual fade, up or down depending on the reaction.
Big ensembles and big halls the crescendo endings are climatic and merge into the performance, a gentle manual ease works for that.

This is one of the many things iZotope RX can help you with. I have used its "Click Removal" module for years to reduce applause or audience members clapping along to the beat without affecting the underlying music, and without having that "compressed" sound.

I posted about it here. The name of the preset in current RX versions may be called "periodic" or "random" clicks.

I set up an omni at the mix position, and I also take a stereo board feed. When I mix the live recording i just find a nice blend of the direct sound and ambient sound. Using the venue sound as the effect.

(?) - The question was about handling applause that's too loud in the mains.

I had not read the original post but that is a BRILLIANT idea.

In almost all the work I do, the artist doesn't want any applause in the final product. The only time this is a problem is when the audience "jumps" the ring-out. That can be fixed with an artificial reverb tail via Altiverb but it's a bit of a PITA.

D.

Really? As an artist I always want the applause: it makes clear that it is a live recording, and mistakes happen.
If anything I might want it to sound more enthusiastic…

Great idea!
——
If it’s just a few isolated very loud claps that don’t fit/take up too much head room. I use RX Spectral Attenuate set at 0.1-0.3 strength on just these loud claps.
Totally transparent.

This is only natural... but there was a music director/conductor I worked for, he'd whip the audience into a frenzy on a regular basis with performances from his inspired/passionate choruses... and yet insist that every shred of applause be removed.... and so, yes, I'd have to take the last split second of music and send it off to a reverb crafted to match the hall... and that would be the fade... an excellent education in these things, but also as weird as hell.

That must have been fun !

Did you manage a result he was pleased with?

You can be purist about the integrity of the recorded audience response, treating it as part of the performance and retaining the same gain level as the performance itself, or....?

Depending on whether you're using directional or Omni main pair mics...you're already making a choice about the relative clarity, volume and 'envelopment' of that applause-presence in the context of the performance.

If you're making a recording of a premiere performance of a new composition for the composer, and you happen to have a small, but adoring and enthusiastic (but still small) audience....what are you going to do ?

You could produce the recording au naturel, thus conveying a sense of lukewarm response. You could turn up the volume of the applause...which instantly sounds like a still-small audience, who are individually clapping at a louder-than-humanly-credible level. You could double or triple copy the applause file, displace each a few 10's of msecs forward and back, and produce an instantly more dense and populous audience attendance. You could remove that applause altogether and splice in applause from a much better attended (audience numbers) concert...ideally from the same location, to keep the acoustic consistent and credible.

If your applause level happens to be too loud...you have latitude to employ some of the same methods, perhaps proportionally inverse/subtractive...to achieve the same goal. Ends justify means...

Ah yes-- the sense of "fun" that includes: "why in the hoozajeebinitz is this anything like a good idea?"

He was tickled pink. The singers would wind up into a thundering, exalted finale and then whoosh-- it sailed off into neverland. I never understood it!

Also been there and also done that. Works great!

I normally chop em out.
Much prefer silence and a pretty tail and a hearty applause at the end of the CD

I would go to the extreme of even leaving the last of the applause petering out, then give them a minute of the crowd picking up and walking out, and then a minute long fade. My rationale seemed to be "this is the most like being there, the easiest way to lead the listener out of the fantasy that they have heard the performance. If you were there, this is what it would sound like. Concert over, random chattering of the crowd, you exit the building, gradually your world gets quiet..."

But equal parts it was "with this brain new DAT technology, I have two hours to a cassette, man I am going to flaunt this...!"

Much to recommend in this approach, although with an over-enthusiastic audience you often don't get much tail before the applause wave roars in ! In a concert recording, multiple applause instances breaks the concentration spell...as well as the illusion that the audience were fully attentive the whole time !

There's no formula for 'correct' applause fade duration, you have to tweak each to the context. If it's for radio broadcast you might elect to leave in some of that post-concert 'buzz' and departing chatter, at low level, for the announcer to talk against.

Hi Joel,
I just want to make everyone aware, Performance Today hasn’t been an NPR program for about 15 years now. It comes from APMG which is the national, parent company to Minnesota Public Radio. This is the same company that creates Marketplace, Pipedreams, SymphonyCast, the Splendid table, and Live from Here among others, as well as distributes the BBC in the US. Just an FYI. Best! Cameron

Well, even so, they make wonderful selections to broadcast to their audiences... and the elucidation on appropriate levels for applause is stellar!

We generally prep applause to come in at a bit less than -20 on a LUFS meter on Performance Today and try for at least a minute of applause to tuck under our host.

Hopefully audiences at the concert are keeping that in mind...


Anyway, thanks for featuring Close Encounters With Music as much as you do.

Resurrecting my old thread...

I have recently been working on some old concert recordings, recorded with a simple stereo mic on a stand which was quite close to the audience and the applause was a lot louder than it should be. It is often clipping, but that really doesn't seem to be much of a problem by itself.

I think I found a good way to deal with it, using Reaper's own limiter plugin ReaLimit. I use it by setting both Threshold and Ceiling to the same value (and link them with "Constant gain"). To find the right settings I find the highest Peak of the music (not the applause). I set ReaLimit to a negative value of the highest Peak plus some dB (I don't want the applause to be the loudest part of the recording).

The trick is to add automation for this, by using the "Wet" parameter, setting that to 0 for the music, and then quickly fading that up to 100% for the applause. I find that this works much better than reducing the gain for the applause - which I could never get to work well.

The "Wet" parameter can only be set as an automation envelope - took me a while to find it. Automating the Threshold or Ceiling envelopes can only be done separately, it seems they cannot be linked for automation, at least I haven't found a way to do this.

Anyway, I thought this might be useful to someone.

The way I usually deal with audience applause is to use clip gain in Pro Tools. I can select the applause portion, hit the b key and it becomes its own clip with its own clip gain. After I adjust the gain, I can use cross fades and adjust until it sounds natural. I can also slide the fades earlier or later in the timeline which help with getting a natural sound. Usually I can make lowered applause edits completely inaudible.

I often cannot get this to sound natural. Applause doesn't always start quickly, and when it starts slowly the effect of reducing gain is either an audible fade out of ambience, or if the fade is placed later, an audible reduction from the first claps to the full applause.

With the limiter approach I can completely avoid these effects. Naturally the applause itself loses some of its "depth" or "dimension", but I really don't mind that...

Record without the crowd and dub in post.

Unless you want coughs in the middle.