Cannot debug these weird clicks

[Simanza]

For all who have responded to my requests about the strange clicks I get a certain edit points, I would very much like to upload a sample, or email it to those who might want to check it out.

I have zoomed in to the sample points and the clicks DO NOT APPEAR. But they are quite apparent in the audio playback. I know this sounds impossible.

For some reason, I cannot upload the sample directly, but if there is anyone who might graciously agree to listen, I would be very grateful to send you the sample by email.

I can be reached at:

simanza [...at...] gmail [...dot...] com

[kozikowski]

OK. I got it. You have serious discontinuous edits. I have highlighted the problem on these four pictures:

http://www.kozco.com/audacity/
click1.jpg through click4.jpg

If the pictures come out gritty, download them and open them in Quicktime or Photoshop if you have it. Magnify your brains out.

Any time you cut sound and you disturb the natural rhythm of the waveform, you in effect create your own sound. Note that in all these cases, the click is the only straight up and down portion of the waveform. That's clearly where the edit was performed. Note on click3.jpg, there is an additional sin. The cut was performed from a waveform that was about to go up, to a waveform that was clearly on the way down. Serious discontinuity. Heavy click.

Number four was just for fun. That one has two clicks in it. Can you find the second one? It's on the right at the extreme downward going waveform.

So that's what's happening. The question is how to get rid of it.

I don't know. You can certainly go into Audacity and "redraw" the waveform around each click. I know nothing about that tool other than there is one. I don't think there is a tool inside Audacity that forces edits to occur at the midpoint (zero volts, not zero dB) of the waveform, but it's worth a look.

You can find each click and reduce the volume to zero during the click. You have to find two bracketing mid-crossing points to do that and that's pretty hard in Audacity.

A sure cure that pretty much kill you dead is to do a very fast fade between one sound and the next instead of cutting. That should only triple the time for editing, but is completely transparent.

Koz

[kozikowski]

Under EDIT there is a tool called Find Zero Crossings. That tool is supposed to get rid of this problem by sliding each edit slightly to an acoustically irrelevant place.

Koz

[waxcylinder]

Under EDIT there is a tool called Find Zero Crossings. That tool is supposed to get rid of this problem by sliding each edit slightly to an acoustically irrelevant place.

Koz

Yes, Koz, but for me it doesn't always find a good "acoustically irrelevant" place - sometimes it finds a zero crossing within the patch of noise I am trying to fix. That is precisely why I changed to using the Repair tool in 1.3

WC