I am doing repair work to remove some minimal clicks from an old cassette recording I transferred.
Because these clicks are minimal they do not stand out from the rest of the music in the sound wave display, therefore I am having a hell of a time finding the correct locations to repair.
The playback line that passes along the audio wave display moves very rapidly. When I hear the click is the line likely going to be slightly before, right on the mark or slightly ahead of where the actual click is?
Is it possible to slow down the playback to better pinpoint where the clicks are?
I have tried for several hours to repair just one click, but I miss the click spot each time and am quite frustrated.
I’m pretty adept at repairing audio, but because these clicks aren’t visually obvious any tips on how to find and repair them is greatly appreciated.
There is no tutorial for Ultra Beginner. I looked. They all assume you have a nodding familiarity with how an editor works.
And you don’t. So here’s the basics.
There is an Audacity preference that makes new editors nuts. Update Display while Playing or Scroll Display When Playing. Locate that in the Preferences and turn it off. Restart Audacity.
Nobody uses the Play and Stop buttons. The spacebar will do both. I think editors would open a vein if we couldn’t do that.
The blue waves in the timeline will start playing wherever you click.
Select something by click-dragging. Spacebar will play within that selection.
=================
Control/Apple-E – Zoom into the sElection
Control/Apple-F – Zoom out Full
Control/Apple-3 – Zoom out a little bit.
So that’s navigation and selection. From there, it’s just getting used to the tools and filters.
You need to know that Audacity will not save sound files. If you want a stand-alone, standard sound file, you need to Export one. There are other Audacity changes depending on what you want to do.
In 1.3.x there is a new toolbar which enables you to play at varying speeds without alteringthe audio. It has a gree play triangle but in a square button with a slider next to it - the slider controls the playback speed.
You may find it easier to spot the clicks if you change the view to Spectrum - use the little black triangle in the top right of the Track Control Panel to the left of the track. The click should show up as a bright pink vertical line. Zooming in (use the magnifying glass icon) will probably help you to spot the clicks easier.
kozikowski: I think you posted a reply to the wrong question because your response showed a complete disregard for anything remotely to do with my question. I have been engineering sound for over 43 years and unlike you I can read and comprehend. Seems every forum has those who like to post their nonsense just to read their own crap!
waxcylinder: Thank you for the insightful and help information. Problem resolved. Folks like you make these help forums a real treat! Again, thank you ever so much!
<<<Seems every forum has those who like to post their nonsense just to read their own crap!>>>
Sorry. I don’t hit them all. The structure of the question was almost exactly like an earlier one where the user was a complete beginner and was starting playback from the beginning of the song each time.
Caffeine deprivation.
<<>>
But can you post answers to other people’s questions? Never enough of those.
BTW don’t get too upset at Koz. He sometimes gets a bit curmudgeonly - in fact that’s what he lists as his “profession” in his Audacity user profile! He actually does a lot of really good work on this forum offering great advice to folks …
Thank you waxcylinder. I am transferring hours of cassette recordings from the late 70s through the early 90s. Most of these recordings are fine, however I use Soundsoup to remove tape hiss then edit and repair as needed in Audacity.
The recording I was working on that prompted me to begin this topic was a very ambient recording and I think the tape age resulted in some unwanted clicks that has never previously been an issue.
I learned years ago, Audacity’s repair effect is an excellent way to fix a glitch in an MP3, when that MP3 is of a rare recording and the only possible version available. Otherwise, repairing clicks is not a huge issue with me, which is why I wasn’t familiar with finding them via the Spectrum view, but that solution was an absolute winner and I greatly appreciate the tip!
I’m a bit anal regarding audio mastering and I’ve found using a click removal process denigrates the sound a bit, so I prefer to go and manually fix each instance individually, although I’ve never tried click removal in Audacity or the programs recommended here. I do not like how Soundsoup handles click removal.
I will test the programs you and Gale recommend. They may be more useful for removing clicks from vinyl, however as stated above, I am working on cassette recordings and click removal is a very minimal occurrence.
Thank you for taking the time to share this valuable information with me. It’s more than I hoped for and I greatly appreciate your time and kind consideration.
If you need to remove a lot of big clicks (too big for the Audacity Click removal feature), hang onto the recording until Audacity 1.3.8 is released. I have written a plug-in to remove big clicks and in preliminary tests it works pretty well. I will release it when Audacity 1.3.8 is released (Nyquist has been updated in Audacity 1.3.8 and this plug-in requires the new version of Nyquist).
If anyone already has Audacity 1.3.8 alpha and would like to test this plug-in, let me know and I’ll PM it to you.
No this is something else.
I had a recording with a whole bunch of nasty clicks that would have taken forever to fix manually, but the clicks were too severe for Audacity’s Click removal so I made a plug-in. The interface is very clunky and the “repair” is definitely not perfect, but the results were good enough to salvage a recording that would otherwise have been scrap.
I’ve not given up on the updated Clipfix, but with Nyquist being updated I’ve started again with it. The original Clipfix code was rather convoluted and also had a problem if clipped audio occured on the boundaries between the blocks of audio that were processed so it seemed best to start again from scratch (and just using the bi-cubic interpolation function from the original). My first version of Clipfix simply checked the wave for reverse polarity and if found just repeated the same sample value until the reverse polarity came back again. It would then run a second pass on the audio with the old Clipfix code. In contrast, the new version does the whole lot in one pass which is considerably more efficient. The bit that still need work on is the looping and handling of clipped audio that occurs at the loop points. I have a holiday coming up in a couple of weeks, so hopefully get it finished then.
Not yet. I was not sure if it would be a good idea to post it before 1.3.8 is released as it requires the updated Nyquist.