Removing clicks/pops

Hi!

I have a .wav rip of a disc that I want to rip and it's got a lot of cracks/pops on it. I can remove these all just fine using the Auto remover in Audition 1.5 but this takes forever as I need to listen to the whole .wav and find out where the clicks are. If i was to select the whole CD .wav and do the click remover would it affect the unaffected music data at all? I mean... does the click remover just look for the Hz frequency of the clicks and change them only when found as I don't want to find out I've affected the parts of the audio that are fine later on. Hope that made sense! =D

Thanks!

Jam it back in, in the dark.

rip it properly with eac and you shouldnt have clicks.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

I wouldn't be asking for help removing the clicks if I could do that. As mentioned above all I have is the original .wav files for the discs expanded from the .ape format. So does anyone have a response to my original question? Thanks!

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

This would be my advice. I use Cool Edit, which is now Adobe Audition. I presume the click/pop removing software is pretty similar.

OK. That assumption made, simply select the whole WAV file and run the filter, and if the WAV audio is visibly changed (flattened or visually looks really different), the hit 'undo'. If you're not sure if it's really different, just test it by playing it. if you can't tell with both your eyes and ears, post some comparisons and we'll check it out, or send me the WAV and I'll see what I can do for you.

Regards,
- Spike

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

... having tracks that are clearly corrupt defeats the point to downloading lossless. i'd delete that shit so fast.
unless i knew the cd was mastered bad and all copies have clicks, like a track on the black cat ost.

I was speaking idiomatically.

First off, you are certainly going to lose quality by selecting the entire waveform and running a click/pop filter on it. I recommend you run through the entire waveform manually, work your way through 10 seconds at a time and fix any clicks/pops my manually selecting them. However, if you still feel like selecting the entire waveform, be my guest, but you're not going to be able to fix those clicks/pops that are dug in pretty good, at least not without losing quality or dealing with them only (and not the entire wave).

Since you're running Adobe Audition 1.5 and I myself use it for editing reasons, I can recommend quite a few things to work around clicks and pops. I've ran into them a countless number of times and each instance has been quite unique.

Alright, you need to determine whether you're dealing with a click (i.e. the waveform takes a huge leap for a ms, clearly visible) or if you're dealing with a brief moment of silence. Both can clearly be heard, but are sometimes indistinguishable unless you are able to visualise the problem.

If you're dealing with silence, there are two possibilities (to my knowledge) -
1) The sound has skipped (i.e. lagged) in which case you would be able to merge the wave by removing the silence manually. This requires a great deal of testing and accuracy.
2) The sound has not been recorded. This would require a re-recording and can't really be remedied, as far as I know.

However, since your main problem seems to be clicks, let's try and configure your Click/Pop Eliminator. You can access it by clicking the Effects tab -> Noise Reduction -> Click/Pop Eliminator. At first, this might seem rather complicated, but you'll get the hang of it pretty soon. Let's break it down;

The AUTO FIND ALL LEVELS setting
If you're lazy and you want to take your chances, you can always hit the Auto Find All Levels button. The filter will then find representation samples throughout the highlighted portion of your waveform and shortly after that, it will gather click-data for low, low-mid, mid, mid-high and high levels. Now, you also have two boxes where you can enter numeric values; Sensitivity and Discrimination. These are very important when dealing with the Auto Find All Levels feature.

The ranges vary from 4-50 for Sensitivity and 2-100 for Discrimination. What do they mean? Well, the lower the sensitivity is, the more clicks are likely to be found and the lower the discriminiation is, the more clicks will be fixed. So, your first shot at fixing clicks might be using this feature. Enter a setting, for instance 10-10 in both and hit the Auto Find All Levels button. Then hit OK. If you can still hear a click, undo that action and lower the values. Always undo your action if it was unsuccessful. You want to preserve as much quality as possible. Every time you run the sound through a filter, you're manipulating the sound, remember that.

DEALING WITH THE CRAP MANUALLY
Moving on, there's a Find Threshold Levels Only button, which could be used in conjunction with the Auto Find feature. It scans for dB levels, so it might work if there's a high-pitched click. However, if you're up for a challenge, you can always edit the Detection and Rejection fields. You can do this after hitting the Find Threshold Levels Only button. Do NOT hit the Auto Find All Levels button after configuring the Detection and Rejection fields, as this will reset them all to the gathered click-data.

Detection and Rejection work the same way as Sensitivity and Discrimination. Their ranges vary however. Detection has a range of 6-60 and Rejection levels range from 1-100. As you can see, there's quite a lot of tuning to do, but it might be good if you're dealing with a click which is really hard to get rid of. Just enter the lowest possible value.

Furthemore, there's the Detect Big Pops setting, which you should enable. Lowering this setting will find more pops, but I recommend keeping it relatively high. My default setting is around 80, because I usually deal with pops manually.

Do enable Second Level Verification, Pulse Train Verification and Smooth Light Crackle. Leave the other settings disabled.

Finally, there's the primitive way of dealing with clicks, if you're able to see them clearly, you can try and lower them manually by lowering them to the level of the actual music. This might work if the filter (for whatever reason may be) fails to solve the issue. It is NOT recommended, but if you can clearly see the click, it might work.

Also, I recommend visiting this site if you're looking for valid and professional expertise; http://www.audiomastersforum.net/amforum/index.php

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Originally Posted by Cam

... having tracks that are clearly corrupt defeats the point to downloading lossless. i'd delete that shit so fast.
unless i knew the cd was mastered bad and all copies have clicks, like a track on the black cat ost.

Well it's a bootleg so it's not so easy. Plus I don't want to edit the .mp3 because I'd have to re-encode it and I'd lose quality... doing it from the master .wav file I can then mount it as a disc/.cue and then rip it, retaining the quality hence why I'm doing it this way.

And thanks Killy that's quite a big help! Appreciate the time you took for that.

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