Clicking noises - why and how to remove?

[Ani365]

Hi there,
After recording one finished hour of my audio-book I'm desperate to find a solution to the clicking noises that seem to be so frequent in my clips. For a long time I thought I was just bumping my headphone cables or something to make the noise myself, but I've been making an effort to hold still and was seeing on some forums here that the clicking could be something else like a loose cable.

Two things:
How can I prevent the clicking, and how can I edit it out easier? I'm wasting an incredible amount of time editing clicks out. They're both during silent parts between words and sometimes while I'm speaking. I have a blue yeti (not the pro), a new one as of a week or two ago, and i had the same problem with the old one. It's just the yeti, the USB plug and the headphones, so I can't imagine it's a loose cable since they're all new.
I can try and shut down any other programs I running on my computer and move my phone anyway, but are there any other ideas? I do use an ipad in the mic booth to read from. Not sure what else to do.

I just tried click removal and it didn't do much.
My only option right now is to rerecord (or leave be) sections where the clicks come up when I talk and continue painstakingly editing out the clicks between speaking.

Help is appreciated.

Attached a sample of a click (and a pic of what they look like in my wave form), obviously you can only hear it when the volume is all the way up, but I don't want to submit an audiobook with hundreds of little clicks in it.... doesnt seem professional. I also don't want to waste hours and hours and hours editing them out as I have been.

Thanks for the help!

[billw58]

Does this help?
https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/faq ... ac_crackle

-- Bill

[Ani365]

Does this help?
https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/faq ... ac_crackle

-- Bill

I will absolutely try this next week when I'm recording again and see if any of those suggestions help! Thanks so much!

[Ani365]

Hmm, just tried all of the suggestions listed there, but still getting the clicking every few words. Though it may be just a hint quieter?
Any other suggestions. It's really frequent and I'm wondering what I'm doing wrong here. Makes for heavy editing.

Thanks for the help.

[billw58]

I've listened to your clip and I'm not sure where the click is. Is it between the "a" and the "ck"?

The FAQ I linked to is about periodic, tiny dropouts or silences that sound like clicks. That's not what you have.

-- Bill

[Ani365]

I've listened to your clip and I'm not sure where the click is. Is it between the "a" and the "ck"?

The FAQ I linked to is about periodic, tiny dropouts or silences that sound like clicks. That's not what you have.

-- Bill

The clicks aree just before and after "jack" though I think it's too quick to hear. Here's another clip, and you can hear the click just before "Ch 7" and also before "to my relief". I attached of picture of that waveform so you can see the little click before each phrase. I also added "click 3" which has a click after I say "the edge", and that's a really common click I get all the time at the very end of a word or something at the beginning. It's definitely not my mouth so I'm not sure what that's about.
I will say after recording all night last night the audio sounds much much better, so maybe I spoke too soon and your suggestions did work. However, obviously there are still a fair amount of clicks like the attached, just not every other word like before, so ideally there's a solution for eliminating as many as possible.

Also - weird new thing - whenever I play a file in audacity through my macbook speakers the entire file plays with crackling, wildly. It never used to. And it doesn't do it through my headphones. The only thing is, now sometimes I'll hear a random click or crackle noise as I'm listening back, here and there, on my headphones - but it's clearly not part of the actual recording since I go back and it's gone. These two issues started around the same time. Any idea what that's about?

[kozikowski]

Lets do a test. Start a recording and leave the room for about 20 or 30 minutes. Come back and stop it. File > Export a WAV (Microsoft) 16-bit > OK.

While it's open, cut out any large blue waves like any noise you may have made when you moved your chair.That should give you a field of super tiny clicks. Now select the whole track (button on the left) and Effect > Amplify > OK. That will tell you the repetition of the noise.

While that's on the timeline take a picture of it and post it here. Then File > Export a WAV (Microsoft) 16-bit. We'll want to keep that around a while for analysis.

How are you editing out the existing clicks?

Koz

[kozikowski]

You can use Punch Copy/Paste.

viewtopic.php?p=208312#p208312

This was designed to quickly and easily cover up "simple" noises such as yours. It's still manual one-by-one, so we still have to find where they're coming from, but the action is a lot simpler (we assume).

I've never used it, so I can't give you the Quickie/get-out-of-jail/CliffsNotes description.

Koz

[kozikowski]

I don't want to submit an audiobook with hundreds of little clicks in it.... doesnt seem professional.

Don't worry, it probably won't make it past Human Quality Control.

I can think of a worse problem. One of the forum posters sold multiple books and couldn't submit the last one. No matter what he did, they found something wrong. All his right-on-the-edge errors lined up for this one book.

Koz

[kozikowski]

You may be the one and only good application for Noise Gate. Noise Gate suppresses any sounds lower volume than a setting. It's a common mistake to reduce background noises to zero, but I wouldn't do that. Just reduce everything 15dB or 20dB. Just quiet enough so nobody will ever find the clicks—even after mastering.

You should still find what's causing the clicking. The goal is to produce a quality audiobook by the quickest and simplest method possible.

Koz