Plectrum Clicks

[yardenamir]

Hi, this is my first post in here and I'm new to audacity as well.

I was looking for a post on this but the search results werent helping -

My plectrum when I record with my guitar makes a clicking noise. Now, obviously from now on I try not to strum anywhere close to the pick-ups but I have this specific track that I would like to keep but get rid of these annoying pick-attack noises.

Noise removal doesn't really help, even when I isolate the sound. It seems that each click is different because it's embedded within the frequency of the strum.

Any tips would be greatly appreciated, thank you.

- Yarden

[kozikowski]

Like those annoying fret slide squeaks? I don't think we can get rid of those, either.

The definition of "noise" as in Noise Reduction, is an undesirable sound that stays the same through the whole show. Air conditioning whine, microphone hum. That's why Noise Reduction didn't work. Another reason is each pluck is slightly different, like trying to get rid of each snowflake that looks exactly like this one.

Koz

[steve]

If it's just the occasional click you may be able to fix it by careful editing, but if there are lots of clicks throughout the recording then that will take forever.
If you upload a short sample you may get some more specific suggestions.

[yardenamir]

Thanks for the replies, people. What sort of file should I upload, a simple MP3 or an audacity file?

- Yarden

[steve]

Upload a short section as either WAV or FLAC.
(Maximum file size is about 1 or 2 MB)

[yardenamir]

Here we go. Note the clicks at the beginning of each note.

[steve]

If you look carefully (zoomed in both vertically and horizontally) you can see three little wiggles in the waveform where the plectrum click is.

tracks000.png (22.42 KiB) Viewed 1763 times

I don't know of any way to automatically remove the clicks, but you could delete them then use the "Repair" effect to smooth the edit boundary.
Tip: You only need to select the "Repair" effect once. After that you can use Ctrl+R to Repeat the effect.

It will be time consuming to go through every click, but here's a before/after.

[yardenamir]

Brilliant, thank you very much. Though, what's that beep in the middle of the track?

[steve]

The sound before the beep is your original recording. The sound after the beep has had the plectrum clicks edited out. The beep indicates that one version has finished and the next version is about to start.

[L_Libza]

Brian Davies "Click Repair" does a pretty good job of removing the clicks automatically. I just used the default setting for 78 rpm records, but I am sure you could experiment with other settings to improve on the results.