Preventing mouth sounds while recording vocal track?

[Grunberg]

I would like to create vocal recordings to my PC using a high-quality microphone. However, past attempts have yielded very prominent mouth sounds in the resulting recording (the typical breathing and popping/smacking of the tongue and lips due to moisture and saliva.)

How does one minimize these hindrances during a vocal recording? Or am I plagued with manually editing those nuances out afterward? What is the trick?

Any information is appreciated. Thanks!

 

[ssddx]

good placement of slightly off to the one side and a proper distance away but still fairly close to center as well as use of a pop filter. in some cases i've seen users use both a pop filter and foam windscreen.

 

[Geekwad]

Pop screen will help a lot, as mentioned, but can also use a noise gate/compressor or post-processing to to help remove some of those artifacts.

 

[Grunberg]

Thanks for your information! Okay, stupid follow-up question:
Would it be necessary to use a microphone windscreen and pop filter at the same time? Or would that be overkill?

 

[mjslakeridge]

With some condenser mics, there is going to be some level of popping, breaths, etc. regardless of whether you use a foam windscreen and a pop filter. In our studio, we use an Audio Technica 4033a, and if the vocalist moves his feet on the carpet, the mic picks it up. I just edit out all of the breaths ahead of the phrase, and use fades on the end of the phrase. I also compress the vocals going to the mixer, and insert a de-esser plugin on the track when mixing.