Finding clicks in recordings

[sugarcool6]

I have trouble finding the exact spot where a click/pop is in a vinyl recording. Let's say I want to remove a click, I can hear it and aproximately know where it is on the timeline. However the white line under the green 'play'-triangle on the timeline
goes so fast that this line passes the spot where I need to be. And sometimes it looks as if by optical illusion this spot 'moves' .

Example let's say that you have a crackling noise in a music piece 30 seconds into the track. But looking at the white 'play'-line or 'indicator the first time it seems just a second before or it is one second later than 30. I know about the solution of the 'spectral' image of the time-line. And it helped me on another occasion. But now I just can't really nail down where this click is despite of several trials and solutions.

What I miss is either a slowmotion method where the white line would pass the damadged part of the recording real slow so you could see better where it is. Or there should be a method where you can see the line passing it when the timeline is enlarged. Trouble is that only when the timeline is not that much enlarged you see this indicator 'play'- line passing the timeline. But when it all is enlarged to microlevel you cannot see this indicator passing the damadged area slow enough to see where the damadge exactly is.

In short is there no slowmotion method to play the track so you can see the damadged area being passed in slowmotion?

[kozikowski]

I think ideally you turn software loose and let it do the work.

http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/tuto ... iques.html

Koz

[steve]

I have trouble finding the exact spot where a click/pop is in a vinyl recording.

The "Track Spectrogram" view is very useful for finding clicks, Click's usually show up as a bright vertical line. Select the small region where the line is, then switch back to Waveform view and zoom in on the selected region. The glitch will the probably be visible near the middle of the selected region. See here for more details: http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/clic ... _view.html

[sugarcool6]

Again I know about this solution with the spectral time-line.
Normally if you enlarge the timeline you get to see the sound represented as blue dots on a thin wire. Where clicks are you see spikes shooting up and down and you can repair this in various ways. This is easy and clear. But some clicks are not represented as spikes, to make it worse after enlarging the click-area seems pretty normal as if there are no clicks at all. So the click is hidden.
Indeed with the spectral view you can make it visible but now I have one that is pretty hard to change.
And again; if you keep looking at the play-line/indicator (the vertikal white line under the litle green triangle, that passes the timeline very fast) sometimes it looks as if the click is on one spot and then it seems a few mm further down the line.
This is by optical illusion for the vertikal white line goes very fast. Most of the times it is pretty clear but other times you really will have trouble if the click is here or a bit further.
Therefore I was thinking why isn't there a view in this software that you can see the damadged area in a kind of slow-motion window, then you can see where exactly on wich of the dots or group of dots is the actual clicking sound.

[steve]

And again; if you keep looking at the play-line/indicator (the vertikal white line under the litle green triangle, that passes the timeline very fast)

The speed depends on your zoom level. The closer-in you are zoomed, the faster it moves. You need to try and find a happy compromise so that it is not moving too fast to see, but is zoomed in close enough to get close to where the click is.

why isn't there a view in this software that you can see the damadged area in a kind of slow-motion window,

You can play at slow speed using the "Play at Speed" control ("Transcription toolbar": http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/tran ... olbar.html), but that is not likely to help very much because when a click is played in "slow motion" it ceases to be a "click" and turns into a "thwoom" which is hard to hear.

Once you get close to where the click is, there are several ways to help pinpoint the location more exactly. Looking for red vertical lines in the track Spectrogram view is usually the best (Tip: zoom out vertically so that you can see the high frequencies. http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/zoom ... l#vertical).

Also you can use "Timeline Quick Play" to loop play a small region, which can indicate whether the click is near the start, middle or end of the section that you are looping (See: http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/timeline.html#tqp)

[mickthefish]

hi sugarcools-to remove clicks in my recordings i scroll through the spectograph of the file and adjust any spikes(clicks) manually that are above the 0.1 decibel range to 0.1db, then use the the auto click removal feature.using this method you know your going to get the optimum audio output....nothings perfect.mickthefish.