Just wondering if you guys go through and remove these types of noises. 

It depends horses for courses.  If its a pop or dance track then it's yes.  Listen to any modern pop dance track and u will notice a really unrealistic vocal with none of these artifacts but for anything else use your own judgement.  But really a good singer has a good microphone technique and should know how to avoid such problem and that goes for a good engineer and good microphone choice.

Peace Ben

tfbattag


Just wondering if you guys go through and remove these types of noises. 

Yeah bro, removal at all times unless something sounds like it fits. The best bet is to split clips and fade on stuff like this or just slip edit whenever possible until they go away. The better the mic, the more sensitive it is...the more you may see this animal. Sometimes it just happens and can't be helped....so it has to be removed.
 
One thing that will stop this as well as other artifacts is, always slip edit all the empty space in your clips. I usually do it manually, but I have used process/effects/remove silence many times. You have to mess with it as it may cut off some good things, but once you get it set up just right, you can slip edit a project in seconds. :)
 
-Danny

Yep...always. 

It's very easy to go in and do that.... once you get the hang of it, you can easily do a complete track in a few minutes. 

I always get the lip smacks because they sound like clicks ..... I will generally get the breath intake sounds early on in the song..... I make that part quiet.... as the song goes on and the singer gets "more into the emotion" I will leave the breath sounds BUT, I will lower the levels to barely audible.... it does tend to add to the emotion a bit but never allow them to be a distraction. 

I simply use the audio process>gain> mute or reduce gain -6db... or what ever level is appropriate.

I do the same thing on amp and string noise. as well as singer grunts and other "unconscious" noises they make while singing. 

not always, but sometimes. I found the breath sounds in one of the recent Sonar demo tracks to be really distracting, so I muted them in Sound Forge and the track sounded better to me. But it isn't always the case, and you do have to be careful, sometimes muting sounds unnatural, and you need to just fade them in.

When I think about the time I spent spot erasing tape for this very same problem it makes me laugh!!!!!

I usual slip-edit stuff out and apply a Compresser over the vox.

I put a sock over my mic. ;-)

When muting... you do have to be precise... I find that with the lip smacks of a singer opening their mouth, and then taking that breath in preparation to sing the next phrase.....

If you zoom in, there is a definite wave blob for each sound AND there is space between the sound and the words...(zoom in far enough to clearly see that space and be able to get into it easily to click in there)...... if you select your mute into that silence area, starting well before the noise and ending in the center of the silence, the mute is flawless and will not interfere with the natural sound of the beginning of the singer's phrase.  

Of course.... you always check it. I start my playback in the center of the last phrase and play through my mute edit to be sure I didn't trim anything important. There is always UNDO. But 99% of the time, I got the edit perfect and click save and move to the next noise that needs muting. 

I normally do this sort of "cleanup editing" at the very end or nearly so, of the process. AND, I mute everything except the track I'm working on and one acoustic guitar track for reference. It's sometimes easier to solo the 2 tracks rather than mute everything else. But the whole point is to hear clearly, what you are working on. 

Yeah, lots of cropping and fading. I rarely mess around with stuff that's in the middle of a clip though. I just rerecord it if the compression or whatever isn't reigning it in enough.

Thus the sock. I've also taken to setting up two mics. One that's close with a sock that I cram my face up against and one slightly further away without a sock. I make sure that second one is far enough away that it's not picking up and plosives or other garbage. Then if I do happen to get something undesirable on the close mic I can usually clean things up by messing with the levels between the two mics.

and yes... I mean an actual sock that goes on one's feet.

I do too. But recently when doing it, I was going through vocal, bass and guitar tracks removing all the unnecessary noise. I do it just to reduce the overall noise floor. But during playback, it's really not that evident. This led me to wonder how people did this with two inch tape, etc. Thus the question.

Technique-wise, I do it the same way that most of you guys do. I always solo the track and just try to make sure that for things like vocals, the transition from one phrase to the next sounds natural. 

Thanks for all of your input.