I'm not sure but I'm assuming in the old days it was a combination of techniques. Like making sure there was a good popfilter/windscreen/mic sleeve set up for the mic, compression/limiter and in post manually turning down the problem parts. I'm sure those engineers made sure they got takes as clean as possible too.

What a pain in the arse dealing with tape must have been. We got it good nowadays.

Depends on the audio and the song. Sometimes for quieter songs they are distracting and I remove them. On louder rock mixes they can add some character or aren't noticeable so I leave them. I also leave them for acoustic styled recordings. Just seems more real for some songs. This, of course depends on how the sounds come across. If they are super loud or distracting I remove em.

+1 all, I'd add Waves Z-noise remover ... which automatically detects 'most' such artifacts.

to answer the question about tape...

first line of defense was well trained talent, and the right microphone for that talent positioned appropriately for the song. You'd be surprised what a difference this can make. I recently worked on a solo guitar album where the artist was very unhappy with all the mistakes he made. I asked him to go back to the studio, and ask the engineer to place the microphone differently. He was thrilled at the result, until he realized that the original performances were a little bit better in general, The second session sounded better though!

If a few clams sneak through you had a choice of muting the offensive noise during mixdown or performing the gentle act of 'spot erasure'.

Each has it's disadvantages

 - there is no undo for a spot-erase, and it requires good ears and VERY steady hands. You disable the idler/capstan so you control the tape transport - you carefully mark the tape where there are noises, then you turn on the erase head and gently (and slow;y) pass the problem section of the tape over the erase head.  You have to be gentle because it is very easy to create NEW pops this way. And you have to remember that the erase and playback heads are separated in space.

- the problem with mutes is that they can create really strange artifacts in outboard processors and effects - especially dynamics processors. And keeping track of exactly when to mute problems on 16 tracks is not as simple as it might sound. With the advent of automated mutes this second problem did become less of an issue. And if you had an empty track or two you could bounce the offending track over to the empty track with benefit of mutes. You risked the increased noise floor though.

These are some of the reasons why you will, from time to time, detect little anomalies and artifacts on some of your favorite recordings from the early 1980s and before. Funny thing is, they usually don't spoil anything!

That was very interesting, wst3. :-)

Very glad we don't have to go through all that anymore.

Lip smacks are one of the most annoying sounds I can think of.  Especially if you are editing VO. 
I either delete them, or zoom way in and use volume automation. 

I use Track Volume Envelopes for this sort of thing.

It's easy, non-destructive and usually forms part of my normal vocal volume automation in any case.

Plus, you can determine exactly how much attenuation is applied - we've discussed before how un-natural a descent into digital silence can be - using an envelope removes this problem, unlike slip editing or splitting/deleting

wst3


to answer the question about tape...

first line of defense was well trained talent, and the right microphone for that talent positioned appropriately for the song. You'd be surprised what a difference this can make. I recently worked on a solo guitar album where the artist was very unhappy with all the mistakes he made. I asked him to go back to the studio, and ask the engineer to place the microphone differently. He was thrilled at the result, until he realized that the original performances were a little bit better in general, The second session sounded better though!

If a few clams sneak through you had a choice of muting the offensive noise during mixdown or performing the gentle act of 'spot erasure'.

Each has it's disadvantages

- there is no undo for a spot-erase, and it requires good ears and VERY steady hands. You disable the idler/capstan so you control the tape transport - you carefully mark the tape where there are noises, then you turn on the erase head and gently (and slow;y) pass the problem section of the tape over the erase head.  You have to be gentle because it is very easy to create NEW pops this way. And you have to remember that the erase and playback heads are separated in space.

- the problem with mutes is that they can create really strange artifacts in outboard processors and effects - especially dynamics processors. And keeping track of exactly when to mute problems on 16 tracks is not as simple as it might sound. With the advent of automated mutes this second problem did become less of an issue. And if you had an empty track or two you could bounce the offending track over to the empty track with benefit of mutes. You risked the increased noise floor though.

These are some of the reasons why you will, from time to time, detect little anomalies and artifacts on some of your favorite recordings from the early 1980s and before. Funny thing is, they usually don't spoil anything!

Awesome information. Thanks Bill. Any chance you can identify some of the classics that may have an anomalie?