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Removing clicks and pops


jneil

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Hello - Can someone please help? I am trying to remove clicks and pops from a wave file. I go to Tools, Auto Click/Pop Restoration, click OK, and a window says Click Detecting and completes the status bar. Then the window goes away it starts playing my wave file. From there, I don't know what to do. The same clicks are still playing, so it seems no changes were made to my file yet. How do you finish removing the pops and clicks?

 

Thanks very much.

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Hello - Can someone please help? I am trying to remove clicks and pops from a wave file. I go to Tools, Auto Click/Pop Restoration, click OK, and a window says Click Detecting and completes the status bar. Then the window goes away it starts playing my wave file. From there, I don't know what to do. The same clicks are still playing, so it seems no changes were made to my file yet. How do you finish removing the pops and clicks?

 

Thanks very much.

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As far as I can tell, this feature of WavePad does not work--just as you have found. However, you would not be happy with it even if it _did_ work! I do not believe that anyone, anywhere, has yet been able to remove clicks and pops _automatically_, as you are led to believe by this seductive inclusion of this "control" in WavePad.

 

Unfortunately perhaps, removing clicks and pops is an art, not a science, and is enshrouded in black magic and witchcraft. Some clicks and pops cannot be dealt with, even manually, which you must use if really want to have any success. The problem here is that everything depends upon the SCALE that is being used to remove a particular click or pop or crackle, or whatever. Scale is what determines how fast the display scrolls by while you play the file. You can change the scale by zoom-in or zoom-out. This is best done using the keyboard controls CTRL + to zoom in and CTRL - to zoom out. You can use more keyboard clicks to zoom in or out to any degree that you desire. At some particular scale, when the display has been stopped (use the ESC key for this), the click or pop will show up as a distinct difference with the surrounding waveforms. Select a small portion surrounding this particular offender and use the keypress CTRL-SHIFT-S to fill up your screen with the small portion that you have selected. You will now be able to see, with graphic perfect, that nasty click or pop. Now select just that portion, press the DELETE key, and that offending little devil will disappear! Oh happy day. Now use several keyboard presses (CTRL -) to zoom out to where you began your search. You are now ready to search for the next little devil, etc., etc. This is a demanding task, and you may have to do this over and over and over and over again as you proceed through the file. Sound exciting, does it? It all depends upon how many hours you have in your day.

 

There is much more, but I can't go into it here. On the other hand, you may just decide to forget about removing those clicks and pops in order to retain your sanity. It depends upon your temperament and whether or not you have the view that, if you cannot get the job done in two minutes, then it is not worth tackling. But you see, _I_ have infinite patience, which comes from years of learning and understanding such things. This may not be _your_ cup of tea :-)

 

WELCOME TO THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF CLICKS AND POPS!

 

Don't say that you haven't been warned.

 

Musikone

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As far as I can tell, this feature of WavePad does not work--just as you have found. However, you would not be happy with it even if it _did_ work! I do not believe that anyone, anywhere, has yet been able to remove clicks and pops _automatically_, as you are led to believe by this seductive inclusion of this "control" in WavePad.

 

Unfortunately perhaps, removing clicks and pops is an art, not a science, and is enshrouded in black magic and witchcraft. Some clicks and pops cannot be dealt with, even manually, which you must use if really want to have any success. The problem here is that everything depends upon the SCALE that is being used to remove a particular click or pop or crackle, or whatever. Scale is what determines how fast the display scrolls by while you play the file. You can change the scale by zoom-in or zoom-out. This is best done using the keyboard controls CTRL + to zoom in and CTRL - to zoom out. You can use more keyboard clicks to zoom in or out to any degree that you desire. At some particular scale, when the display has been stopped (use the ESC key for this), the click or pop will show up as a distinct difference with the surrounding waveforms. Select a small portion surrounding this particular offender and use the keypress CTRL-SHIFT-S to fill up your screen with the small portion that you have selected. You will now be able to see, with graphic perfect, that nasty click or pop. Now select just that portion, press the DELETE key, and that offending little devil will disappear! Oh happy day. Now use several keyboard presses (CTRL -) to zoom out to where you began your search. You are now ready to search for the next little devil, etc., etc. This is a demanding task, and you may have to do this over and over and over and over again as you proceed through the file. Sound exciting, does it? It all depends upon how many hours you have in your day.

 

There is much more, but I can't go into it here. On the other hand, you may just decide to forget about removing those clicks and pops in order to retain your sanity. It depends upon your temperament and whether or not you have the view that, if you cannot get the job done in two minutes, then it is not worth tackling. But you see, _I_ have infinite patience, which comes from years of learning and understanding such things. This may not be _your_ cup of tea :-)

 

WELCOME TO THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF CLICKS AND POPS!

 

Don't say that you haven't been warned.

 

Musikone

 

 

Thanks for the shortcut keyboard control tips. You seem to know a bit about this so I would like to ask you a question about the noise reduction control under the effects menu. This is some kinds of spectral analysis thing - it seems to work pertty well. However there is and adjustment where you can specify what percent to use. I have been using a lower percent when the click is rather minor and a higher percent for a more major click. Still, I am unsure if this is the proper way to adjust this noise reduction process. I wonder if you have any insight as to exactly what is being adjusted and why or whether it should be adjusted.

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First, I am using this reply (without any quotes of the article to which I am replying) since the page for that type of reply comes up unavailable--for unknown reasons.

 

Anyway, clicks and pops are not "noise" in the sense that this word is used in Wavepad. Rather, noise refers to background hiss, such as present in various types of recording media. In other words, an attempt to use the WavePad noise reduction "effect" will not succeed in removing clicks and pops. Furthermore, I have found that the clicks and pops which I am regularly fighting are of very short durations, such as just a few milliseconds. It is amazing how sensitive the ear is to a short-duration spike in the sound wave. When I really want to clean up a clicky and poppy waveform, I laboriously spend a lot of time going throuh it and _manually_ removing those clicks and pops.

 

Another technique that you are undoubtedly unaware of is to press the space bar while you are scrolling through an audio waveform. When you do this, the scrolling will stop and there will be annoying buzzing sound, along with the highlighting of a small portion of the waveform surrounding the current selection point. But I do not use this preselected portion (given to me by WavePad). Rather, after I have stopped the scrolling, if I want to work on the area surrounding the selection point, I press ESC, which stops the scrolling and the buzzing. Then I select a small portion of my own near the selection point, followed by the keypress CTRL-SHIFT-S, which causes the selected portion of the waveform to fill the screen, exposing that nasty little click/pop devil. I then select the devil and delete it. However, the time scale has been drastically increased by zooming into the full screen. Hence you will now have to compress it by zooming out with a series of CTRL - presses to get back to where you were before. You may then restart the play with F9 and continue from there, etc.

 

The big advantage of using this technique is that a toggling of the space bar will alternately start and stop the scrolling very conveniently. The most effective way by far to get a handle on these clicks and pops is to LISTEN carefully while you scroll the waveform. When you hear the telltale click or pop, press the spacebar, which stops the scrolling and gives you the buzzing. If you decide that you do not want to attack the particular little devil that caused the click or pop which you heard, simply press the spacebar again and the scrolling will resume, etc. You see, it is practically impossible to tell _by looking at the waveform_, which spikes or imperfections will be audibly objectionable. Depending upon the particular time scale being used at the time, what looks like a horrible spike may not be heard. Try closing your eyes as you scroll through the file using this spacebar toggling, and quickly press the spacebar when you hear that telltale click/pop. Try to use earphones while you do this. If you look at the wave form while you are doing this, you will be misled as to the significance of some particular spike in the waveform.

 

As to the spectral noise thing, this is an excellent noise-reduction method; just remember that "noise" is not clicks and pops. Simply select a portion of the waveform containing _noise only_; that is, in between tracks or perhaps at the beginning or the end. Then "grab" this sample, deselect the portion containing the grabbed noise sample and use the spectral noise reduction. What this does is to subtract the portion of the spectrum that contains the noise--hopefully at a frequency band largely outside the music. Give it a try.

 

That's about it for now. This particular technique is very easy to use, in contrast with click/pop reduction or elimination in general. The other form of noise reduction is much less effective and, at least for me, usually chops out too much of the music at the high-frequency end. So I avoid using it. But then, that is my own personal preference. It may not be yours.

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  • 8 years later...

Surprising this thread has been dormant more than 8 years.

 

"Click/Pop Removal" (Auto and Parametric: Tools menu) both have some effect on very small selections… unlike a similar feature in Audacity, which only works on much larger samples.

 

I've now used both WavePad tools in various combinations - often one or the other, or one and then the other, or alternating, or one repeatedly until nothing more or much more happens - usually following that up by reducing the amplitude of the selection to half or a quarter of what it was.

 

I often find it easier and more effective to copy a neighbouring sequence of waves of the same length and paste it over the offending distortion.

 

Applying the Auto tool requires two clicks, and the Parametric three clicks. They can only be added to the Custom toolbar together, as "Cleanup', and not separately as buttons. No economy of motion there.

 

This is early in my first real effort to evaluate the features of WavePad which I would (or would like to) use most, which are mostly quite simple post-recording edits and treatments. The MixPad demo period is too brief, so any multi-track chores will be done elsewhere.

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