# *cough*



## SPR (Nov 12, 2008)

so I am listening to Beethovens 9th this morning...









Every time I listen to this recording, I am annoyed at 2:40 into the first movement to hear some guy coughing. Unfortunately - now I am in some sort of psycological feedback loop with myself and it is turning into a gigantic annoyance.

Im considering digitally taking it out. I bet I could do it seamlessly if I take a little time with it.

anyone else have an otherwise great recording that is polluted like this?


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## Tapkaara (Apr 18, 2006)

I have a few live recordings where you can hear the occasional cough, but nothing that shatters my nerves.

What is amazing, however, is the amount of coughing that you experience at live concerts. I don't think I have ever coughed at one. Yet everyone else seems to hack away. How coughs this much? And if you have a problem with coughing, why go to see your local symphony if you are going to ruin in for everyone else? You might as well bring your newborn too.


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## Fsharpmajor (Dec 14, 2008)

SPR said:


> anyone else have an otherwise great recording that is polluted like this?


I have a BBC recording of Shostakovich's 4th symphony which has a loud cough early in the first movement. You would think that when there's a single cough it could be edited out of the recording by the sound engineers in the first place.


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## Fsharpmajor (Dec 14, 2008)

ahem.....................


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## tgtr0660 (Jan 29, 2010)

It's like in classical concerts everybody is imbued by Chopin's spirit.... I have not experienced so much coughing in other kind of concerts....

(of course, in other kind of concerts _people are not silent to begin with_


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## Johnny (Mar 7, 2010)

I digitally removed the entire symphony. On listening to it again it appears 433 is actually playing in the background. Some sort of complex layering. 

That is kind of odd though. You'd think whoever was releasing the cd would have been able to do something about that. Either by removing it aferwards, or by noticing the cough at the time and getting them to replay the piece. Surely the orchestra/conductor would have noticed it at the time. 
Or is it a live performance with an audience?


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## SPR (Nov 12, 2008)

ah. sarcasm.


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## nefigah (Aug 23, 2008)

This kind of thing can really bug me, too. Let me know if you are successful in editing it out (or more likely, just in making it less severe).


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## Argus (Oct 16, 2009)

tgtr0660 said:


> It's like in classical concerts everybody is imbued by Chopin's spirit.... I have not experienced so much coughing in other kind of concerts....
> 
> (of course, in other kind of concerts _people are not silent to begin with_


Good point. Imagine how weird it'd be if the crowd at an AC/DC concert were completely silent.

I think the amount of coughing at classical concerts has to have some correlation with the age of the audience. Lots of old people equates to health deterioration and seeing as how smoking was a lot more popular 30/40/50 years ago, there is likely to be more tarred and blackened lungs. Often it's not even light coughing it's like serious catarrh or people trying to hock up a greenie.


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## Guest (Mar 10, 2010)

SPR said:


> now I am in some sort of psycological feedback loop with myself and it is turning into a gigantic annoyance.


I sympathise with you but that is the nature of live recordings, it can drive you mad.
I have 3 CD set of J Dupre, rec live from the Edinburgh Festival and it is full of coughs etc but for me it just adds a touch of reality to it.


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## SPR (Nov 12, 2008)

Andante said:


> ....but for me it just adds a touch of reality to it.


agreed. I hope I didnt come across as being unrealistic....seems I did. Simply taking note of how a well-misplaced-hack got to me in this case.


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## SPR (Nov 12, 2008)

Tapkaara said:


> ...What is amazing, however, is the amount of coughing that you experience at live concerts. I don't think I have ever coughed at one. Yet everyone else seems to hack away. How coughs this much? And if you have a problem with coughing, why go to see your local symphony if you are going to ruin in for everyone else? You might as well bring your newborn too.


*sigh* This, was not my point... if I actually had a point. To this I would simply say 'lighten up'. Nobody is out to torpedo your experience.

I think this is one of the things that frighten some people away from attending... getting frowned at and browbeaten by an entitled few who feel that their experience is being ruined by an 'ahem' or some involuntary snort.

Cellphone?? *run em out on a rail*!! cough, sneeze or lord help us something even less pleasant? Relax and move on. This is a social event.


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## jurianbai (Nov 23, 2008)

As wise as I know, if the cough appear with music background that is impossible to remove. because all sounds rendered into one signal. only if the cough is an isolated noise then we can delete it right away.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

I suppose they didn't delete the cough, because in that series (great recordings of the century) EMI want to recreate the recording to be as closest to the LP as possible, just remastered with the modern technology. So there's an argument for keeping the recordings 'as is,' I think...

I have a number of newer recordings (from the 1990's) that were recorded live but there is not an audience noise to be heard (including clapping). They sound exactly like studio recordings, so I assume they have edited out the other noises. A bit clinical? Either way, I don't really mind...


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## scytheavatar (Aug 27, 2009)

I don't get it.... what makes you guys think that it's easy to remove away coughs? By removing part of the recording's frequency spectrum you're going to have to take away everything in that spectrum, wanted or not wanted. Far too many recordings are garbage because of excessive noise reduction (the Solti Ring would be the best example of that). By listening to 50's mono Furt it should already be understood that you're going to have to live with compromises from what the latter recordings can offer.


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## Guest (Mar 11, 2010)

It really only gets annoying with repeated playing not the occasional listen.


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## Air (Jul 19, 2008)

This is a very interesting issue for me. 

Recently, I've been interested in collecting "ancient" piano recordings, almost all of which have the so-called "hissing" noise in the background. Well why don't they just remaster them all then? That would get rid of the problem quite easily, no?

Not quite. OK, we've tried this - on our recordings of Scriabin, Friedheim, and the list goes on. But the best we can do with these is still a piano roll. Good sound? You bet. How about the performance - is it real? No, technically it's not. (I realize that this couldn't be helped back in the day, and I am most certainly grateful for our piano rolls.)

This isn't quite relevant yet, but I'm getting there. So let's say we take a more recent recording, Richter's Schubert D.960 on Praga for example. There's a loud cough after the 1st movement development and some hissing in the background. Are we to over-remaster it and destroy the "essence of the performance" or leave it be, excusing the few coughs as part of the concert atmosphere? I'd take the second one anyday - it's really Richter's playing, and that's what I want to hear in the first place.

A few more words. Naxos Historical did a lot of remastering work when transferring the 78's onto their most recent CDs. In some cases, they did a good job. But in others, the sound is clearly "fake", electronic if you may, overly-amplified and quite disturbing. And note that Argerich's legendary performance of Tchaikovsky's 1st concerto (on Philips) has a blatantly obvious mistake in the beginning of the 3rd movement. Even Chuck Norris could catch that. But did Philips take it out? No, and I think there's a good explanation for this.

A cough is much of the same issue. You either leave it be or destroy the whole recording. You can't just extract it like it's on a different audio track - there may be many difficulties in the process and worst of all, the recording can become uneven, even more distracting than a "realistic" cough here or there.


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## SPR (Nov 12, 2008)

re: editing it out

this has turned a mole-hill into a mountain. but I'll respond to this...

Its not as hard as you think, editing it out. If you have a little luck. Typically, you can find a 7 second clip of the piece elsewhere in the music that can be used to overlay the offending bit. It is not about trying to extract the 'cough' waveform from the desired content. Most half way decent sound editing packages can do this, as I said, quite seamlessly... and generally restatement of themes in a piece is enough (or a few moment of dead air of similar ambience... where a nice *cough* is often found).

If anyone is interested, I will try to post 10 second clips 'before and after' such an edit.

-------------------------

It really isnt worth doing on a routine basis though - unless you have something really glaring that you find particularly bothersome in a favorite piece.

Air - some of the available 'hiss removal' techniques out there are very good. Notch filters etc have come a long way in the past 10 years. However it is still an art in itself, and if you are not careful you can distort the sound in undesirable ways - something that is easier to do than many expect.

Even in the 70s it was possible to do well. Wendy Carlos recorded all of her 'Switched on Bach' recordings on a 4-track tape... recording multiple voices one track at a time, combining, re-wiping tracks etc using the new fangled 'dolby'. The end result was *very* good... testimony that given proper attention and technical (and artistic, acoustic) expertise - even multiple layers of hiss on a 4-track can be mediated to a large extent.


....babling


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