Lav Mic Clothing Rustle: How to Stop and Fix It

The short answer

That scratchy, crackly rubbing sound under a voice is a clip-on lav mic touching clothing. Every time the speaker moves, breathes or gestures, the fabric brushes the mic head or the cable, and the mic hears it from up close, much louder than it sounds in the room.

Most of it is fixed when the mic goes on: clip it where nothing rubs, loop the cable so it can't tug, and tape it down. After recording, rustle is hard to remove, because it's a moving, changing sound right under the words. Short ticks can be cleaned up, and longer patches are best cut, replaced or re-recorded.

Why lav mics pick up rustle

A lav sits a hand or two from the mouth, which is great for the voice. It's also right on the chest, so anything touching it is even closer. Rustle comes from three places:

• Fabric on the mic head. A shirt, scarf, jacket lapel or tie brushing across the capsule.
• Fabric on the cable. The cable carries vibration to the mic, so a cable rubbing under a shirt is heard too.
• The cable pulling. When the speaker turns, a tight cable tugs the clip, which sounds like a thump or crackle.

DPA's lav specialists put it simply: a mic you can nearly see sounds better, because there's air around it, and you "reduce any risk of fabric rustling against the capsule or against the cable", as they say in their notes on hiding lavalier mics.

Mount it so nothing rubs

These steps follow RØDE's lavalier mounting best practices and their guide to using a lav mic.

1. Pick a spot on the middle of the chest. Over the breastbone, about 20 to 30 cm from the mouth, where clothing isn't rubbing. Keep it clear of necklaces, lanyards, ties and jacket edges.
2. Make a loop in the cable just below the clip. This small loop, sometimes called a broadcast or newsman's loop, takes up tugs so they don't reach the mic.
3. Add a second loop an inch or so lower and tape it. Camera or gaffer tape holds the loop in place, so the cable can't slide or pull when the speaker moves.
4. Tape the cable down where it runs under clothing. Anywhere it can swing or brush, tape it to the inside of the shirt.
5. If hiding it, use a proper mount. A soft rubber mount, or a clip made for the job such as a vampire clip on a T-shirt, holds the mic still and soaks up some movement. A bare mic taped against fabric that moves will rustle.
6. Outside, add the furry windshield. It also helps with light fabric contact.
7. Have the speaker move before you record. Ask them to turn, gesture, breathe deeply and laugh while you listen on headphones. If you hear rustle now, you'll hear it in every take.

What repair can and cannot fix

Start with the audio quality check to see what else is on the file. Rustle itself doesn't have a dedicated fix, so match the tool to what you hear.

• Short ticks and crackles: sometimes. Remove clicks is built for very short bursts, a few thousandths of a second each. Light crackle from a cable or a brief brush can be caught. Long rubbing that lasts a whole word isn't a click and won't be.
• Long rubbing patches: cut or replace them. Open the editor, select the bad part and cut it at a pause, or replace it with a clean take of the same line. Repair one section walks through doing it without changing the rest of the file.
• Not noise reduction. Background noise removal learns a steady sound, like a fan, and turns it down. Rustle comes and goes and changes all the time, so noise removal will mostly miss it, and pushing it harder can make the voice watery.
• Wind on a lav outside: yes. The low rumble of wind across the mic is a different sound, and the wind noise fix handles it.
• Muffled from hiding it under a shirt: partly. A lav buried under fabric loses the crisp top of the voice. The muffled audio fix brings some of it back, but a mic in the open sounds better.

For a long interview with rustle all the way through, re-recording a short section is often faster than repairing it. Our guide to recording a clear voice covers the test take that catches this before it's in the whole recording.