Waves Audio DeBreath User Guide

Waves DeBreath

DeBreath – Breath Processor

Waves DeBreath Users Guide

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INTRODUCTION -

If you’ve ever had to manually remove breaths from a vocal track, especially the
inhaling sounds which precede sentences, you may have asked yourself,
“Wouldn’t it be great to have something that can do this automatically?” The
revolutionary Waves DeBreath plug-in does just that.

Unlike classic noise-gate type processors based solely on energy threshold,
DeBreath uses a unique template-matching algorithm to detect breath segments
and separate them from the signal. The breath can then be controlled without
affecting the rest of the signal.
Because breath detection and removal are as automatic as you care for them to
be, DeBreath can save both time and mental energy, leaving you free to be more
creative and productive.

DeBreath lets you control the amount of gain reduction applied to the detected
breaths and to add room tone where breaths were removed or attenuated, thus
avoiding unnatural holes in the track. For better control, you can split the audio
into two paths: the Vocal path and the Breath path. The sum of these two paths
will always equal the original source, regardless of DeBreath settings. This way,
you can apply different processing to the vocals than to the breaths. For
example, you might compress only the voice path, leaving the breaths quieter,
more open and natural. Or, you might choose to darken the removed breaths.

Latency

Certain types of digital audio processors require buffering, windowing or look­ahead, resulting in a delay, called latency. Tune’s latency is 32384 samples at 44.1
KHz or 48 KHz and 64768 samples at 88.2 KHz or 96 KHz. Many audio
workstations automatically compensate for latency. Others don’t. Refer to your
workstation’s operating manual.

The DeBreath plug-in is intuitive and easy to use, and has proven to be a true
time saver. You will soon discover that perfect results are very easy to achieve.

Waves DeBreath Users Guide

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QUICK START-

Insert the DeBreath processor into your vocal track.

There are two parts to the process of removing breaths: detection and reduction.
First DeBreath will find the breaths, based on two settings. Once you are happy
with DeBreath’s detection choices, you will decide what to do with the Cbreaths.C

DeBreath’s default settings are designed to provide good results under many
conditions and are generally a good place to start your breath detection. Listen
to the Voice path. Listen to the breath path. This will reveal to you the quality of
the detection and the correctness of the detection settings. Then you can begin
making adjustments.

There are two threshold settings used to fine-tune DeBreath’s detection:

• CBreath ThresholdC – To more accurately detect breaths, DeBreath stores a

database of breath templates, or definitions, of what comprise breaths. The
Breath graph displays the similarity between the incoming audio signal
and the breath database template. The scale is from 1->100 and the higher
the value the greater the likelihood that the event is a breath. If you set
the Breath threshold very high, only the most certain of matches will be
reported as breaths.

• Energy Threshold – Here we assess an audio event based on its energy. If

the energy of the event lies below the threshold, it is more likely to be a
breath.

When the Energy is below the Energy threshold UandU the Breath is above the
Breath threshold, the plug-in classifies the event as a breath and reduction is
applied.

Fine-tune the detection threshold parameters until you are satisfied. Now you
can adjust the Reduction slider to determine how much gain reduction should be
applied to a detected breath.

Waves DeBreath Users Guide

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