I have only recently started recording and my experience with Audacity is not so great so I wanted to ask for your help.
I have recorded a concert in an open venue with a very large noisy audience (about 50,000) people. The recording came out pretty good for my standards but the problem was that there was someone that was extra enthusiastic next to me (the clapping kind). He was clapping in front of my mics during the entire concert. I don’t think it caused any clipping because I ran the “find clipping” utility and it didn’t find anything and also there are no red lines throughout the graph but there are a lot of spikes at the areas where this guy was clapping.
If possible I would like to lower the noise of the clapping which is a lot louder than the rest of the recording without damaging the recording itself. I tried to use the Equalization, Compressor, Normalize, clipfix and a few other effects but nothing really worked as I wished. The only way I was able to lower the spikes that were caused by the clapping was using the Hard Limiter option but it distorted the recording.
I’ve tried looking for a tutorial online but couldn’t find one that solved my problem. I am an Audacity beginner and I will really appreciate it if you could help me solve it.
You may be able to use Audacity 1.3 Effect > Click Removal. It’s intended to remove cat hairs from phonograph records, but it might work for you. If he was too crazy with clapping, you might find that there is no music back there when you take the clap out.
Thanks kozikowski for the advice. I tried to use the “Remove Click” utility with different parameters. I received the best results when I set the threshold to 150 and the max spike with to 40. I didn’t really understand how this effect works so I will appreciate it if you could explain to me.
When I tried to run the effect on the same sample for a second time the change was less noticeable and on the third time there was barely any change. If I run the effect a few times can it damage the sample?
I added an image of the before and after the click removal effect. Is there a way to make the clapping spikes even lower without lowering the volume of the music?
I wrote a snippet of code for removing certain types of clicks that may help.
This is not currently a full plug-in, but you can run it by copy/pasting the code into the Nyquist Prompt (in the Effects menu).
It probably requires Audacity 1.3.8 or later (not tested on earlier versions).
If you would like to try it and it looks like it may help, I can add the extra code to make it a plug-in.
To try different parameters, change the numbers in the lines:
(setq ADL 0.001) ; Attack Decay Lookahead time
(setq floor 0.0001)
(setq threshold 0.1) ; level over which the detection wave must pass to trigger the gate
(setq detect-freq 1000) ; high-pass filtered sound used to trigger gate
(setq process-freq 1000)
The effect should only be used on affected areas as it will cause some degree of damage.
;; CLICK FILTER
;; Not a replacement for the Click removal in Audacity,
;; but may work with some types of click that the Audacity one misses.
(setq ADL 0.001) ; Attack Decay Lookahead time
(setq floor 0.0001)
(setq threshold 0.1) ; level over which the detection wave must pass to trigger the gate
(setq detect-freq 1000) ; high-pass filtered sound used to trigger gate
(setq process-freq 1000) ; high-pass sound processed, low-pass sound bypasses processing
(setq trigger-sound(hp(s-abs s)detect-freq)) ; "s-abs" is used to catch negative going clicks
(setq gated-s(gate trigger-sound ADL ADL ADL floor threshold)) ; gate function
;; invert the gate and centre it before clipping to +- 0.5
;; then push it up into the range 0 to +1.0
(setq gated-s(sum 0.5 (clip(diff(sum floor 0.5)gated-s)0.5)))
;; High frequency component should include the clicks
;; which are now attenuated by the gate
(setq high-s(highpass8(mult s gated-s)process-freq))
;; Low frequency components that should be essentially
;; free of clicks without processing
(setq low-s(lowpass8 s process-freq))
;; recombine high and low components of sound
(sim high-s low-s)
Probably. The test is whether you can hear the damage, and if the “clap-reduction” is worth the damage.
Looks like you’ve been fairly successful. Read the wiki article and then try different settings on the same chunk of audio to see what works best.
You’ll never get all the claps out. As Koz is wont to say “it’s like trying to take the cream out of the coffee”.
There’s another option, but it’s not free. There’s a program called “ClickRepair” that was designed specifically to take the clicks and pops out of vinyl and shellac (78 RPM) records. You might be able to coax it to do a better job of removing the claps than Audacity’s Click Removal tool can. If you’re interested just Google “ClickRepair”
Steve, your code worked really nicely. I set the parameters to:
(setq ADL 0.005) ; Attack Decay Lookahead time
(setq floor 0.0005)
(setq threshold 0.05) ; level over which the detection wave must pass to trigger the gate
(setq detect-freq 700) ; high-pass filtered sound used to trigger gate
(setq process-freq 700)
Thais setting gave me nice results although I am not sure what each parameter is
The spikes were really lowered without doing any noticeable damage to the track (at least to my ears). The Click Removal option also worked nicely so I think I will use both of them…
I wrote a snippet of code for removing certain types of clicks that may help.
This is not currently a full plug-in, but you can run it by copy/pasting the code into the Nyquist Prompt (in the Effects menu).
It probably requires Audacity 1.3.8 or later (not tested on earlier versions).
If you would like to try it and it looks like it may help, I can add the extra code to make it a plug-in.
Steve, I have the same problem with someone clapping along with the band (at least they were keeping good time). Your snippet works very well. I am interested in a plug-in since this problem comes up often.
Mike
To install the plug-in, unzip (extract) the attached file and put it in the Plug-Ins folder inside the Audacity installation folder. On Windows computers, this is usually under “Program Files”. On Mac OS X, it is usually under “Applications”. Restart Audacity, then the Plug-ins will appear underneath the divider in the “Effect” menu.
This is a “type 3” plug-in and requires Audacity 1.3 (or later). clickfilter.ny.zip (1.46 KB)
I’ll have to try some of the above, but FWIW I’ve been using Pop Mute to tame the claps. It won’t remove the reverberation from a clap (probably not an issue for you since venue was outdoors and your mic output wasn’t in the speakers), but it does a nice job of quashing the spikes.
Hi. Was going to post a similar question.
I did go through some of the suggestions in this post but I think I have too less knowledge to comprehend what is going on…, and what I have is more like a recorded audience applause and jeer.
There is some applause in the background during the performance in between…but it is more like the kind in sitcoms - recorded clap and jeer… it fades in and out.
When I open the audio file in Audacity 2.0.3, and analyse the graph that it shows, I cannot see a clear noise in the audience clap sections of the music. I tried compressing, noise removal, and something with even vocal remover (since I thought it is an instrumental piece) but none of that helped.
I have once used Audacity to remove talking from a background score but that was different since those audios are usually mixed. That is about all the experience I have had using this programme.
I am too new to Audacity to understand all of its effects and small tampering and would appreciate if somebody could guide me through this.
I’d guess that you are stuck with it. Individual claps can be suppressed to some extent, and quiet, constant background hiss can be reduced, but I’d expect there to be nothing that anyone can do about “studio applause and jeers” fading in and out during the performance.
is worth the damage.