Audacity Forum

The clicks on the example you posted are mechanical

So his phone stopped making mechanical noises when he turned its transmitters off?

Koz

To whoever said the clicks are mechanical, I'm not sure what to tell you. After thinking back to all of the times the clicks weren't there it was every time that I was just testing a new mic out and wasn't reading off of my phone. Then I would think the new mic solved the issue because there were no clicks...then the clicks came back when reading with my phone. The clicks have sounded the exact same with 3 different mics, including a high end xlr mic with good audio interface, and connected to an iphone or two different PCs (one a top of the line pc). After putting the phone on airplane mode the clicks went away on a recording that was 30 minutes long - never before had I gone more than 3 minutes without a click. It was the phone, hate to break it to you :p

kozikowski wrote: ↑

Fri Sep 04, 2020 12:18 am

The clicks on the example you posted are mechanical

The clicks sound like the mic diaphragm suddenly flexing, having been tensioned by previous plosives,
like a spring-loaded mouse-trap being triggered, (in this case the trap is intermittently reset by plosives).

Now Tylertrue1 has replaced his 35$ mic with a "high end" mic could explain why the clicking has gone.

kozikowski wrote: ↑

Fri Sep 04, 2020 12:18 am

So his phone stopped making mechanical noises when he turned its transmitters off?

If it was sound from the phone they would have noticed it: the click would be like the tick of a wind-up alarm-clock.

I'm not saying phones cannot create electrical interference, but it does not sound like this ...

The high end xlr mic did the same thing. As did my mid level USB mic and cheap mic. The only common thread in each setup I had was reading from the phone. Anyway, I'm just trying to help anyone else out with this problem. This is 100% what it was. Nothing mechanical about it, no matter how it may sound to you.

Or it's possible that the recording I sent you was a mechanical click from that first cheap mic I was using and there were interference clicks as well in that recording (there were clicks at least every couple of minutes). And then it was just interference clicks on the next two mics I was using. Either way, a better mic and phone in airplane mode has stopped the clicking. That's the important part.

Okay I have been having this same issue and I only notice the clicks in spectrogram form. The thing is I noticed they basically only appear when I try to delete or add “good noise” to an area with a heavy breath or any other bad room noise—or any edits really. By deleting or pasting new audio into my recording, little blue spikes will appear out of nowhere and make pop noises. The weirdest thing is that if you delete the spike it sometimes just creates another one endlessly, like a whack a mole. Anyone have any advice on this?

RodeMotu wrote: ↑

Sun Sep 06, 2020 6:55 am

The thing is I noticed they basically only appear when I try to delete or add “good noise” to an area with a heavy breath or any other bad room noise—or any edits really. By deleting or pasting new audio into my recording, little blue spikes will appear out of nowhere and make pop noises.

Your audio may have "DC-Offset" (see: https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/dc_offset.html)
If it has, then you need to fix that before you start editing.

Interesting thank you for the response. All my equipment is brand new I’m wondering if this means I need to replace my audio interface or if it is a common problem that can be fixed purely in the editing process?

steve wrote: ↑

Sun Sep 06, 2020 12:48 pm

RodeMotu wrote: ↑

Sun Sep 06, 2020 6:55 am

The thing is I noticed they basically only appear when I try to delete or add “good noise” to an area with a heavy breath or any other bad room noise—or any edits really. By deleting or pasting new audio into my recording, little blue spikes will appear out of nowhere and make pop noises.

Your audio may have "DC-Offset" (see: https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/dc_offset.html)
If it has, then you need to fix that before you start editing.

So I actually just read through the dc offset page you linked and tried to apply the fixes but my audio is actually level at 0 and not offset, and cutting and pasting still creates the spikes. Any other possible solution you can think of?

Clicks can also occur if the audio contains sub-sonic (very low frequency) rumble. That can be fixed by cutting the very low frequencies with the "Filter Curve EQ" effect.

If it's a speech recording, there is a preset "Low frequency roll-off for speech".
If it's a music recording, it would be better to cut off just the extreme low frequencies (below about 40 Hz).