Eliminating clicks and pops in one channel

Audacity Help Forum Windows
1

I have a video recorded with a Samsung Galaxy S5. One channel has an extensive amount of crackling and popping. I’m not sure what caused it but wonder if there is a way I could use Audacity to eliminate the crackles and pops in that one channel?

I suppose I could delete the track, leaving me with a mono recording, and then use a “mono to stereo” plugin to make it sound more like stereo. But I’d rather fix the existing track if there is a reasonable way to do that.

Thanks!

2

What sort of recording? Does it need to be stereo? If not, “Split track to mono” and discard the bad channel. A mono track plays through both left and right, so no need to duplicate a mono track.

3

Does your phone actually record in stereo? Does it have two mics? Even if it does record in stereo, I’d be rather surprised if there’s much stereo information. Usually when you record in stereo you use directional mics, angled left & right, and/or spaced-apart.

There is a trick that sometimes works… That’s copying the good channel over the bad channel only where there’s a click or pop. Assuming the the defect is just a few milliseconds in duration you only loose stereo for that short time, and the channels are usually similar enough that the repair is not noticeable. It helps to use a short crossfade or blend to (a few samples) avoid “jumps” in the waveform during the switch-over which can also sound like a “click”.

I’ve never tried it with Audacity, but [u]Wave Repair[/u] ($30 USD), made for cleaning-up digitized vinyl records, has that built-in. It’s still time-consuming as you have to manually select each defect.

4

Thank you all.

After trying a few tools and techniques, and finally realizing there wasn’t enough stereo separation to make much difference, I decided that changing to mono using the better track was by far the easiest solution, and more than adequate for our needs. (Yes, the phone has two mics and records in stereo, but the mics are of course only the length of the phone apart. I’m glad there were two mics so corruption of one channel let me with another channel that was adequate.)

Guy