Clicking sound

[TroyMJ]

This is an E-Mail from a buddy on my "Clicking" issue:

Yeah, it is an EXTREMELY subtle noise. Very similar to a Microsoft mouse-click effect: "ker-clik!" I understand why you relate it to a saliva-lip-smack kind of thing. That's not a thermal-calibration click. It's something else.

The most obvious click that I could consistently hear without augmentation was at the end of the word "decision". Others I didn't pick up all the time. Applying "Normalization" to the track amplifies the click and makes it more noticeable.

What's really wierd is when you zoom into the audio waveform in Audacity, the sound seems to be appearing in a no-signal digital-zero area. There isn't an obvious spike where a click is heard.

What are your EQ settings on the recording? Can you turn down the treble, or reduce +8kHz and higher-frequencies and make it go away? You're trying to get a warm in-your-ear intimacy on the track anyway, so a duller less-lively tone may not be a bad thing.

-Mark

[whomper]

bartletts book listed a lot of noise sources
do not have it handy - some from memory below

did we rule out TMJ?

radio transmitter nearby ?
light dimmers?
cable tv. my set top box makes noise in the pc speakers from time to time.
thermostat element? on some heat/cool sensor.
refrigerator thermostat kicking in/out?

bad connectors
*especially* 1/4 to 1/8 adapters. or any kind of adapters.
bad usb or rca cable/connections.

Bad mike with vibrating element?

CIA bugs in your house? we through out our old phone and that night somebody stole only that bag of garbage out of our big container. only bag and the only time that ever happened.
i still think they wanted the bug back.

this is a tough/interesting problem

[steve]

Do you guys have any other ideas what might be causing these?

Reading through the posts it seems that the one thing that is in common each time the problem occurs is "you".
Unless I've missed it, I don't see any reports of the problem when you are not speaking and being recorded.
Any news on the Krystal tests yet?
If it does turn out to be a saliva slap or similar, we can look at ways to reduce the effect.

[TroyMJ]

Coodos to Whomper...

The clicking is my jaw! It doesn’t do it all the time. But if I listen to the area under my earlobe sometimes I hear a little click, the same as when I stretch my neck from side to side. I can force the click by saying "Jay” if I listen carefully while saying Jay I can hear the click. I can move my jaw around and say jay and the clicking will go away. When I tested this into the mike I could hear the clicks recorded when I heard them in my head and when I didn't hear them in my head the clicks were not on the recording.
Now my demon has a name so I can attack it! How do I fix this?

[whomper]

your dentist should be the next stop
various fixes depending on the root cause

you may want to live with it unless it is painful or causes other problems
but talk to your medical/dental professional about it !!

[steve]

How do I fix this?

There's not much that can be done about the clicks that are already recorded.
They are at a relatively low level and have quite a broad range of frequencies present (mostly in the range 7-11kHz, but extending down to below 2kHz). This means that they cannot be tackled by filtering without very significant loss of sound quality to your voice.

Here's a spectrogram of one of the clicks. Frequencies are shown on the vertical scale - the pink blobs that are centred on the cursor position show the click.

firsttrack000.png (107.32 KiB) Viewed 549 times

You will probably find that if the microphone is a bit further away from your mouth that the clicks will be less noticeable. The choice of microphone will probably be your best weapon unless your dentist can sort something out for you. Headset microphones will probably pick up the clicks more than other microphones. I realise that for this type of recording you need to keep the tone of your voice quite gentle, but if you can project a bit more volume, then the clicks will be relatively more quiet.