How can I iron out a 'bitty' sound in my recording?

[Xirix]

My cousin and I just used Dxtory for the first time to record microphone audio while playing and recording a game, and it seems that was a mistake. We thought it would be convenient but the audio quality is much worse than when we just used audacity. Our voices are clear and so is the game audio from the TV... but there's a very occasional sound going on in the background... it's hard to describe, it's like tiny little pops.

Are there any options I can run in audacity to try and remove these, or make them less audable?

I've added a small sound file of an example, it's not the microphone as we did another recording the same day with audacity when we realised Dxtory was being weird, and that came out perfect.

[kozikowski]

Are you putting a USB microphone or headset system through a USB hub? Live audio doesn't like going through hubs with other equipment.
Koz

[Trebor]

... Our voices are clear and so is the game audio from the TV... but there's a very occasional sound going on in the background... it's hard to describe, it's like tiny little pops.
Attachments Isaac.wav (882.07 KiB)

It looks like "skipping" : occasionally the computer isn't listening to what you are recording for a millisecond while it's doing something else , see ... http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/fa ... l_[b]skips[/b]_or_duplications.3F

Issac (skipping).gif (21.06 KiB) Viewed 840 times

Are there any options I can run in audacity to try and remove these, or make them less audable?

Paul-L's DeClick plugin will remove the clicks, but applying it can take several times the playback-time, depending on the settings used ...

Isacc , before-after Paul-L's De-Clicker.wav

(451.57 KiB) Downloaded 36 times

With these settings takes 4x playback time on my computer (YMMV)

Paul-L's DeClicker in Audacity, showing settings used here.gif (17.2 KiB) Viewed 840 times

[Xirix]

The microphone was plugged directly into my computer's USB, no Hubs. I'll try the declicker, thanks.

On further analysis I was quick to judge Dxtory, it seems it was happening because of the game... somehow. We were playing The Binding of Isaac rebirth, we tried another recording with Fraps and Audacity, same thing happened. Then we tried another game with Fraps and Audacity and no skipping occured.

That page says skipping is caused because audacity can't write fast enough, is it possible that because I recorded a 1080p video at 60FPS with Fraps, AND audacity to the same HDD it was fighting for writing rights?

[Xirix]

Sorry for the bump, I just tried this several times, twice with your settings, once with the default.. the program keeps crashing about 10% in. No message, it just turns itself off.

My computer's pretty good (i5 quad core, 12 gigs of ram, Windows 7 64bit) and I'm letting the computer do it without interruption... is the plugin just buggy or something? Or is it not optimised for larger files? I was trying to do it on a 2 hour wav

[Trebor]

... is it not optimised for larger files? I was trying to do it on a 2 hour wav

You may have to break-up that 2 hour audio into smaller chunks for Paul-L's DeClick .
( I've only used that DeClicker plugin on audio which is minutes, not hours, long ).

Other DeClick software which is faster and more established is Brian Davies DeClick.
IIRC 21 day fully-functioning free-trial of Brian Davies DeClick is available ,
( it's a standalone program which requires Java , it's not a plugin for Audacity).

Isacc original , Paul-L declick, Brian Davies declick.wav

Paul-L more clicks removed , but Brian-D much faster processing.

(653.36 KiB) Downloaded 33 times

Brian Davies DeClick settings used: DeClick 75 , Crackle 0 ,
( processing faster than playback-time is possible when "sound output" off in Brian's DeClick).

[Paul L]

Hello!

Once again Trebor pushes my effects to their limits and beyond purposes I imagined...

Fixing damaged audio glitches was not really what I meant it for. It was meant to filter out the naturally occurring but undesirable clicks in recorded voice.

If you get good results anyway, good for you. But I wonder if you really need such extreme settings to get good results.

I don't set the top of my frequency band above 10000 -- the acuteness of human hearing drops off fast above that.

But it's really the lower frequencies that are more expensive to process.

Also it is more expensive when the number of bands is greater and so the width of each frequency band is less.

So I suggest starting with much lower values for top frequency, number of bands, and number of passes. See what is adequate on short samples. Then you may have better luck on larger files without exhausting memory.

[Xirix]

Okay I finally got something working so I want to thank you both very much, I've been able to do 10 minutes at a time.. which bizarrely ranges from 2 to 4 hours to finish... but it's fine, the end result isn't perfect but it sure makes the noise less obnoxious by far, and without affecting anything else in the recording.

My only other alternate was using the 'Click and Crackle' remover with Sony Vegas... which made our commentary slurred... and didn't even do as good a job on the noises I wanted removed.

Hopefully I'll never have to use this again though. No more recording video without making sure the HDD isn't getting maxed out.