In some musical genres, a typical three-minute single can contain over 100 words deemed verboten by daytime radio. Making the song acceptable to playlisters without ruining the vocalist’s flow can be a difficult challenge for the recording engineer, demanding multiple recalls and a lot of tedious editing. Now, a new plug-in from Malaysian developers Roop Filla promises to take the legwork out of ‘expletive management’.
Cussout Pro uses advanced speech recognition technology to identify swear words, vulgarities and sexual references, and replaces them either with silence or with your choice of radio-friendly sample. It can operate either as an off-line process or a real-time plug-in, the latter making it suitable for live use at the expense of considerable latency.
Although there’s a lot going on behind the scenes, Cussout Pro presents a simple interface with just one main control. Labelled Bowdlerise, this sets the amount of ‘profanity reduction’ to be applied. At its zero position, the plug-in does nothing, while at extreme settings, it eliminates even oblique references to sex. A Cuss Solo button helps you to fine-tune settings by auditioning only the swear words that are being removed. It’s also possible to set negative Bowdlerise values, forcing the plug-in to replace harmless phrases with progressively more offensive obscenities.
The plug-in ships with US and British English dictionaries, and the developers plan to support most other European languages within six months. Other features in the pipeline include the ability to detect and remove subliminal messages and Satanic chants, and 64-bit AAX support.
Cussout Pro is available now at a price of $199, and if you want to try before you buy, a 30-day demo is available. In this mode, saving is disabled and all obscenities are replaced with the sound of Stephen Fry crying.
