Clicks/Beeps in Recorded Audio w. Video Examples

[MarcusAurelius]

Sure, sounds good. I'm still hoping someone out there sees this and can answer my questions in the last post and maybe the cause of my initial trouble.

[MarcusAurelius]

Sorry for the necro but I now have a much more sensitive mic. The audio quality is really fantastic but the damn clicks are not going away. I am nearly 100% convinced at this point that it's mouth noise, but only the mic picks it up, I can never hear it myself. Changing the gain does nothing because when I normalize in Audacity they come back anyway.

I've done it all - lemon water, green apples, chewing gum before recording. Nothing stops it. It only happens within words, never in the open . It almost sounds like my jaw cracking rather than a lip smack. I'm a young guy though, so it's weird that I'm so rattle-y.

I have tried the Paul's click remover and despite the thread here being full of people saying it's the 2nd coming as far as I can tell after 12 minutes of work it doesn't appear to have removed one click, again probably because my clicks are different than the usual mouth clicks (boy it's great to be unique).

If anyone wants to check it out and tell me what you think, if you can hear it, or how the audio is otherwise, I would greatly appreciate it. I ran it thru noise removal at 15 (I tried 10 but it didn't remove nearly enough), then normalize at default settings, then compress at default settings, then I use the bass and treble boost (only reduced to 3db in strength), and then normalize again. I think I could have better equalizer curves but a Google search for Audacity equalizer settings doesn't yield anything. You'd think someone would publish a "vocal" setting. When I see photos of curves they are, well, curvy, while mine are straight line, angle down, straight line, angle up, straight line.

If you watch the below link, you can hear them everywhere, right from the beginning. One thing to note: if I listen using my speakers, with a small built in bass boost, I barely hear the clicks. I hear them a LOT however in my new Audio Technica M40x's. I guess it all boils down to what the people who watch the videos use, but I still wish I could get rid of the clicks. Maybe a speech therapist or voice coach?

Here is the video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ledq0VGKAs.

Thank you all!

-Marcus

[Trebor]

I have tried the Paul's click remover and despite the thread here being full of people saying it's the 2nd coming as far as I can tell after 12 minutes of work it doesn't appear to have removed one click...

Paul-L's DeClicker really is miraculous ...

Marcus ''blind hills'' , before-after Paul-L de-clicker @ settings shown, then what clicks removed from ''before'''.wav

(443.28 KiB) Downloaded 64 times

The DeClicker settings used , may not be optimal.

window-De-Clicker-000.png (23.8 KiB) Viewed 1033 times

before-after animation , vertical lines on spectrogram are clicks.

Spectrogram display of Paul-L DeClicker on ''blind hills''.gif (354.1 KiB) Viewed 1025 times

[kozikowski]

I'm going to wear my Producer hat for a minute (upper case intentional).

"OK, I don't hear any of those mouth problems on my very good quality sound system, so we're done. Forget the lemons."

"However, I find those oddball ............ pauses in the middle of a phrase really ..........annoying. I think you should .........stop doing that. Since I know you're cutting this stuff in post production, you should shrink those pauses in favor of the speech pauses that bound complete phrases and are more natural."

"Once you fix that you're ready for publication."

Koz

[MarcusAurelius]

Wow, Trebor, did you alter the settings at all from stock? Because I'm not just being snarky, I swear I tried it and it didn't remove the clicks. It also seems like the removed (3rd) part has some voice in it...is that normal?

Kozikowski - as for the pauses, are you referring to the way I speak, or something I'm doing in post (when I edit out the clicks). I'm not entirely sure if you're just criticizing my delivery or my editing . I probably don't have any LibriVox recordings in my future, haha I'm glad the clicks don't stand out on your sound system. Maybe these high tech monitor headphones were just designed to drive me crazy.

Also, do you think Normalize emphasizes the clicks? I believe it does, from my experimentation. Are there other normalize plugins, or to ask it another way since I use normalize to get more full volume sound, is there another way I can do that without raising the high pitched sounds (like clicks and long S's) with it?

[Trebor]

Wow, Trebor, did you alter the settings at all from stock? Because I'm not just being snarky, I swear I tried it and it didn't remove the clicks.

The default "threshold" setting on Paul-L's DeClicker is 6dB, which will detect&correct conspicuously loud clicks, but will not change quiet clicks, the threshold needs to be reduced to about 3dB (or less) to detect the quieter clicks. The lower the threshold setting the more the DeClicker will remove, (if too low can remove wanted parts of speech), and the longer it will take to process.

... Are there other normalize plugins, or to ask it another way since I use normalize to get more full volume sound, is there another way I can do that without raising the high pitched sounds (like clicks and long S's) with it?

If Normalize to 0dB isn't loud enough , use a limiter plugin , e.g. http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Nyqui ... ns#Limiter

The "long S's" are excessive-sibilance which can be attenuated with a De-Esser plugin .
Paul-L made one of those too , but SpitFish DeEsser is easier to use ...

''blind hills'' original - DeClicked (Paul-L) - then DeEssed (SpitFish).wav

(418 KiB) Downloaded 53 times

Just a guide, [maybe too much de-essing], adjust to taste.

SpitFish settings used.png (65.34 KiB) Viewed 1018 times

[Paul L]

Hello, I just discovered this discussion.

My Declicker has certain defaults in the published version. Lately I have increased the number of bands from 12 to 18 in my typical use but leave the rest alone. I think that does a decent job on the "blind hills" example.

As for Noise Removal, Audacity's effect has many deficiencies. There will be a much improved effect in version 2.1.0 though. Not to boast, but, I wrote that too.

I hear mouth clicks -- they drove me to such distraction, I wrote the effect. I don't hear what you call "beeps." Maybe your young ears are better than mine. With noise removal, chimes or "tinklebells" or "musical noise" left over in the pauses are one kind of artifact. The Frequency Smoothing setting of noise removal makes the bells less obvious, but does not reduce their number. The Sensitivity setting can reduce the number of bells if you increase it. But the danger is doing more damage to the speech sounds you want to keep. It is a tradeoff. Overuse of noise removal on speech, to my ears, is most evident in breaths and in sounds like s, f, th. (I mean generally, not in your example. What happens if you crank it to 48.)

Audacity's noise removal is for removing background hiss, not for removing mouse clicks. Don't try to crank it up enough to remove clicks.

Even so, it might decently remove hiss in pauses but does a bad job of removing the hiss behind words or music, and I think I am hearing that in your videos as a kind of "gating" effect in the background noise. I explained the reason for that failure and why it is possible to write a better effect in the WIki here, if you are very curious. http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Propo ... ig_problem