I have not seen anyone on these blogs notice the clear compression that ClickRepair renders on any recording. I removed pitch control and reverse, I used simple method and I only used Declick level no. 1… and I still heard the same compression on my track: the stereo separation effect was noticeably compromised. Sounded worse than analog FM radio. I am using 16-bit/44.1 WAV files like I should. Then I drop it into ClickRepair and this is the problems I am having.
It would be better to post this as a new topic rather than tag it onto the end of an old thread.
Also, could you post it on the forum board that is appropriate to your operating system and Audacity version.
Also, Audacity does not have an effect called “ClickRepair”. Do you mean “ClickRemoval…” from the Effect menu, or do you mean a third party plug-in called “ClickRepair”?
Well I’ve just tested both Brian Davies’ ClickRepair software and the Click Removal effect in Audacity.
I can detect no compression or compromise/change of the stereo effect. My test piece was the first sixty seconds of Sgt Pepper which has an extremely marked and wide stereo sound stage.
Both visually examining the waveforms on Audacity with before and after CR preocessing they look identical except for the click which I’ve always had at about 45 seconds in. And listening to the before and after recordings, the soundstage and stereo image was identical in both cases.
Both Audacity’s Click Removal and Click repair dealt with the click extremely well. My Audacity version used was 1.3.12 - ClickRepair was 3.3.1 (Build 41b) with my normal default settings (DeClick=30, DeCrackle=off, Pitch Protection=on, Reverse=on, Method=Wavelet).
So I’m puzzled by your posting Techner.
WC
Back when I was learning to use ClickRepair I did an experiment where I loaded the original and processed versions of a song in Audacity, inverted the original and listened to the result of mixing the two together. All I heard was the clicks.
– Bill
Yup Bill, curiously as you were writing I was doing a similar test with my 60 secs of Sgt Pepper.
I made the left track of the original and the left track that had been ClickRepaired to make stereo pair and then used Audacity’s “Vocal Removal” effect - and this left just the clicks, confirming that the the before and after were basically the same.
WC
Hello. I only joined this morning so I have no idea how to create a new thread, etc. Sorry.
Here is a video I made showing the problem with compression, etc. using ClickRepair. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgFYXdaXiBQ
Please comment.
No problem - I’ve split this off as a new topic for you.
To create a new topic, start at the Board Index page and choose the most appropriate section.
Usually this will be the section that is appropriate to you version of Windows and Audacity version.
At the top of each of these forum “boards” there is a button that says “New Topic”. Just click on that button to start a new topic.
It’s very difficult / impossible to say anything conclusive from that video for a number of reasons:
We still don’t know which version of Audacity you are using, or which version of Windows, or even if you are on Windows, or exactly which version of “Click Repair” you are using. Also, YouTube videos do not produce very good sound quality as the video compression mangles the sound up. Also we don’t know exactly what steps you made and in what order to produce the final recording.
Have you tried reproducing the test that Bill and Waxcylinder have suggested? I expect that one of them will be happy to provide a step-by-step recipe for their test.
Hello. I have uploaded a better example to YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0eUTvH5eCM
Thank you for all the help with the Blog and the tests. I am using the latest version of ClickRepair that I downloaded from their website last night. It is not Audacity. When playing this newer example, please listen to it at the higher 480 setting. I did this because I knew YouTube’s compression marginalized my earler example. I am still using Windows XP on my computer.
Do you have the “Stereo>Mono” setting checked at the lower right of the window?
– Bill
This is the test that I’ve just tried:
I used the standalone Java version because I’m using Linux.
- Downloaded the zipped jar version of “ClickRepair 3.4 (build 4.2a)” from here: http://clickrepair.net/software_download/clickrepair.html
- Unzipped the file.
- Ran the “JClickRepair.jar” file with Sun Java
- Opened a stereo 16 bit 44100 Hz Microsoft PCM WAV file.
- Ran ClickRepair with the default settings and output the file with (the default) “-cr” suffix to the file name.
- Opened Audacity 1.3.12
- Imported both the original WAV file and the ClickRepair’d WAV file into Audacity.
- Listened carefully to both track (using the “Solo” button to switch from one track to the other). Both tracks sound identical except for a a few clicks that have been removed.
- Select the ClickRepair’d track and applied “Invert” from the Effect menu.
- Select both tracks (Ctrl+A)
- Pressed Ctrl+M to mix the two tracks to a new track.
The resulting (mixed) track contains the difference between the original and the ClickRepair’d tracks, which as you can see in this image contains only a few clicks. This indicates (proves) that, other than the clicks that have been removed, the ClickRepair’d track is identical to the original.
Are you sure that you have not accidentally enabled the “Stereo>Mono” option in ClickRepair?
I am not as computer-literate as most of the members of the blog here… but I am beginning to suspect that my problem is that I am still using Windows XP instead of Vista. I think something is not being supported – involving maybe Java - and I am getting less-than-optimum results. My computer has Java Version 6 Update 21, if that helps. I always pick stereo for my settings.
Perhaps it is time for you to email Brain Davies. Not being snarky here, but this is, after all, the Audacity support forum, not the ClickRepair support forum. We determined early on that this was not an issue with Audacity. It’s just that several of us are fans of that software. But we seem to have reached the end of our collective ropes trying to track down the source of your problems. None of us can replicate it.
– Bill
I doubt that very much.
Both the PCs that I use for Audacity and ClickRepair are XP systems one XP-HE and t’other XP-PRO - amd both produce consistently excellent results with no damage to the stereo image (I carefully use Audacity’s Amplify rather than its Normalize to further avoid stereo image damage).
The tests I did yesterday were on the XP-HE desktop that I use for my vinyl conversions - they gave a similar visual result to that posted by Steve above - and from that I draw the same conclusions as Steve.
Both Steve and Bill have asked you "Have you indvertently switched on the “Stereo to mono” switch in ClicRepair - this is the most likely cause of the stereo damage you are reporting.
If this problem persists, and if you do get around to emailing Brian Davies, you should find him helpful - I always have.
WC
As some of you suspected… the problem was a default setting converting Stereo to Mono. Thank you for the courtesy of allowing me to post to your forum.
Glad you got the problem sorted out, and thanks for letting us know the outcome.
Yup thanks for letting us know - and thanks for fessing up, it takes a brave person to admit mistakes …
And it’s not just our forum, it’s your forum too - this is a community of like-minded people and a relative sane corner of cyber-space by and large. You’re polite and informative and we hope you’ll be back here and hopefully even answer some questions as you get more experienced.
Your query posed an interesting puzzle - and it was good to do the experiments even if they did just confirm my assumptions about Brian’s software.
WC