Updated De-Clicker and new De-esser for speech

Programming and Development New Plug-Ins
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I’ve been using this plugin successfully for years. Since there are a lot of people who haven’t been able to figure it out, and since there’s still no documentation, I’ll explain the process I went through to get the most out of De-Clicker.

  1. I created a De-Clicker preset for the “easy” clicks – the ones that are in otherwise silent room tone. This is more about the length and volume of the click than its frequency. These are mouse / keyboard noise, and little saliva clicks that happen when you open your mouth sometimes.
  2. I identified the typical lengths, frequency ranges, and volume levels of the clicks I wanted to eliminate from speech. I did this by zooming in on the dB waveform, finding the boundaries of the click, and using the Analyze → Plot Spectrum function. However, the spectral analysis tool is probably better for this; I just don’t know how to use it.
  3. I gave up trying to work with low-frequency clicks (such as plosives and “lip snaps” at the end of words that end in S, TH, or F. Instead, I manually remove these with -20 bass on the selection. The De-Clicker chokes on low-frequency sound, and the clicks I’m talking about here are not really “clicks” per se – they’re a little longer than a “click,” so the De-Clicker is not the right tool.
  4. After testing, I created specific De-Clicker user setting presets for the most obtrusive clicks: “Wet L” and “Nasal tick.”
  5. Unfortunately when I used those presets in a macro, the processing would either take hours to complete, or Audacity would run out of memory, so I made a macro-friendly version of my presets, basically just reducing the number of passes.
  6. Because I use the compressor on the entire file, some clicks might accidentally get amplified. Therefore I created a post-compressor preset and added it to the macro. Mostly this has solved the problem of amplifying previously mitigated clicks. However Nyquist may run out of memory when a macro is applied to large files, so I had to add a Nyquist Prompt line to the beginning of the macro to increase the amount of memory available to plugins (it will generate a window that you have to click “OK” on when the macro runs):
(SND-SET-MAX-AUDIO-MEM 4000000000)

I still have to occasionally manually remove a click, but the worst ones are cleanly removed via the three De-Clicker presets in my finished audio macro.

Now I’m going to give you the settings, but please note that they will probably not work as well for you as they do for me because my voice, recording equipment, and recording environment are all different from yours. At bare minimum, you must identify your own frequency ranges for each specific type of click you want to get rid of. Don’t complain to me that my settings don’t work for you if you haven’t adjusted them for your own recordings as instructed above.

These first two De-Clicker presets are used before the compressor:

"Pass 1"
Number of passes: 2
Sensitivity threshold: 6.00
Step size: 5.0
Maximum click length: 2
Minimum time between clicks: 3
Dense click threshold: -45.0
Test frequencies between: 150.0
...and: 9600.0
Number of frequency bands: 12
Widen repair intervals at each end by: 5.0

"Pass 2"
Number of passes: 2
Sensitivity threshold: 4.00
Step size: 5.0
Maximum click length: 1
Minimum time between clicks: 3
Dense click threshold: -45.0
Test frequencies between: 4500.0
...and: 8500.0
Number of frequency bands: 16
Widen repair intervals at each end by: 5.0

And this one runs after the compressor:

"Pass 3"
Number of passes: 1
Sensitivity threshold: 4.00
Step size: 5.0
Maximum click length: 2
Minimum time between clicks: 1
Dense click threshold: -25.0
Test frequencies between: 9500.0
...and: 22050.0
Number of frequency bands: 12
Widen repair intervals at each end by: 5.0

To illustrate the effect these presets have on raw audio, I’ve created a brief example file that shows one quick sentence before and after running all three presets, plus the result of the full finished audio macro:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zF20fdDl1Lz5u0NR3Qs_HMjFp5jsZisE/view?usp=sharing

You can download that file, then create three presets for the De-Clicker settings I’ve printed above, and see the effect of each preset for yourself. However – I can’t stress this enough – these exact settings are specific to my voice, my finished audio processing, and my equipment, so they will almost certainly not work perfectly for you as-is. You will have to adjust them.

Hopefully someone finds this information useful.

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