Clicking sound

[TroyMJ]

After recording speech for awhile I begin to get a clicking sound after the ends of words. I have tried different mikes, different preamps, and settings. I can minimize the clicking by moving my mouth further from the mike and lowering the preamp settings but sometimes the clicking remains or returns. I have tried caching reads and writes into RAM (through Audacity) with no effect. Someone suggested my hard drive was getting to hot and was cooling the heads by moving the heads off the platter momentarily and this was causing the sound. I tried putting bags of ice on the RAID 0 drives with no affect. I am at a total loss at what is causing this or how to go about troubleshooting it any further. If you are interested in hearing an example I put on out here: http://www.4shared.com/audio/bKM5i859/F ... k_Exa.html

Thank you for any suggestions you can offer...

[whomper]

have you defragged your hd lately ?

[TroyMJ]

Yes, I defragged the hard drives. Windows 7 says the hard drives are 0% fragmented. I find that (0%) difficult to believe but that is what is indicated. I thought the clicks may be because of the hard drives but when the drives are grinding away, say a virus update is happening in the background, I will not have the clicking. Furthermore, I set Audacity to casche to RAM and I have 6 Gigs of RAM which should prevent Hard Drive interference.

The clicking happens only at the end of words. Could it be something as silly as saliva slapping in my mouth? I don't think so, it sounds mechanical and it is after different sounds in words. Furthermore, they seem to be intermittant. I have not been able to force the clicking to happen.

[steve]

I don't actually notice any clicking other than a couple of instances such as the middle of this short clip:

Click Example.mp3

(81.99 KiB) Downloaded 280 times

I presume that is not what you mean?

[TroyMJ]

Thanks for your help. Clicks are all through this recording but if you listen to the very beginning of the audio... I put quotation marks every place there is a click.

Sal (Kevin) you have now decided to conquer the fear of flying. You have now made a c”onscious decision” to overcome the fear” that you associate” with flight”. And you have decided to” make this ch”ange a priority in your life”. I want to applaud you” for this decision” to better yourself”. You know that humans did “not evolve with wings and that our evolution has kept us bound to the earth. You also realize “”that mankind (Kevin) has dreamed of….

It often happens after explosive sounds like t's but it happens in other places also. It is a very soft click, softer than my voice, but still very noticeable and ANNOYING!

[TroyMJ]

It was rude of me to not make a short clip as an example. Here is a 40 second clip that I wrote out in the post above.

Quotation marks mark places the clicks can be heard.

Sal, you have now decided to conquer the fear of flying. You have now made a c”onscious decision” to overcome the fear” that you associate” with flight”. And you have decided to” make this ch”ange a priority in your life”. I want to applaud you” for this decision” to better yourself”. You know that humans did “not evolve with wings and that our evolution has kept us bound to the earth. You also realize “”that mankind has dreamed of….

[whomper]

... when the drives are grinding away, say a virus update is happening in the background, I will not have the clicking. ....

virus scans and other useless win features like indexing can cause clicking

you need to stop ALL unneeded programs

defrag the drive no matter what it says
you are using a fast internal HD and not a usb external arent you ?

from your description i don't see how it could be caused by your speaking unless you smack your lips with saliva at the end of words and the mike is so bad that it filters the sound and leaves a clicking sound

now what you call clicking could be what we call pops
from plosives but they are usually at beginning of words not the ends

shut down ALL other "services" that are running
as well as antivirus and other programs
(get off the internet first!)
turn off all extraneous stuff like windows indexing
shut them ALL down

then tell us the clicking is still there

[steve]

You have now made a c”onscious decision” to overcome the fear” ....

Right, I see/hear what you mean.

There are various things such as disk fragmentation, other programs running in the background, bad USB connections and so on, that can cause clicks (glitches) by causing data to be dropped during the recording process. However, that is not what is happening here. You appear to have a series of perfectly recorded "clicks". Here's one of them:

click.png (16.89 KiB) Viewed 1277 times

There's no sign of "clipping" (overload distortion) and no signs of dropped data. In fact there's no sign of Audacity doing anything wrong at all. It simply looks like Audacity has recorded a click.

The question is, where is that click coming from?
Unless someone comes along that recognises those clicks we will need to try and narrow that down by a process of elimination.

As a test, could you try recording something that is not your voice, for example, record, with your usual microphone, a radio. Do you get clicking on that recording?

[whomper]

csi had this on tv last night
audio recording of the perp with odd clicks on it
it was TMJ
the guys jaw was clicking when he moved it certain ways

could that be it ???

[TroyMJ]

In response to Whomper (Sat 5/15 10:35 pm)
I stopped all unneeded programs and clicking continued
Harddrives were defragged and clicking continued. ( I have two SATA drives in RAID 0 configuration)

In response to stevethefiddle:
After rebooting my computer and allowing all the services to run again I tried recording a “book on tape” through the mike, and in the same track recording my voice. The track had NO clicks on it.
My buddy and I tried a third mike and the clicks returned. We replaced the two old video cards I was using with a newer video card and unplugged two of the four hard drives in my system. We went into the BIOS and disabled every service not in use to free up all possible IRQs. We still get clicks, thought fewer clicks. We verified large electric appliances in the home were off. We tried moving my cell phone next to the equipment with no affect.
I started using “Kristal” to see if Audacity is the problem. I have not had any clicks in Kristal yet but I am not ready to say it is an Audacity issue.

To sum up what I tried today, I minimized all software and still get the clicks. I minimized all hardware and still get the clicks. The clicks are intermittent. All hardware between me and the computer have been swapped out except the mike cable and the USB cable and the clicks remain.

If the clicks return in Krystal, then I will try recording on my buddies system. Do you guys have any other ideas what might be causing these?