click removal

[j-madd]

Hey all,

What do you guys use for removing clicks in tracks you receive? I am looking at x-click from waves. These are being caused largely by punch ins not being faded in the mixes I get. Any thoughts would be great.

Justin

[Luna Sound]

iZotope RX works really well for me.
You can download a demo and give it a go.

[Greg Reierson]

Manual de-clicking is best for that sort of thing. The "B" and "E" type interpolations in Sonic Solutions are/were awesome (do they still exist in the modern product?). I'm using Wavelab now and a combination of the built in restore function along with the spectral editor work very well.

Production de-clickers like x-click, etc. are overkill for occasional clicks and can do more harm than good elsewhere in the audio. Less is more here.


GR

[MASSIVE Master]

Word (to the peeps).

Automatic "de-clickers" are nice for vinyl transfers and such to some extent - But they can easily dull the crack of a snare or the 'click' of the kick, tame slappy bass, etc.

If it's a few clicks here and there, IMO, there's no substitute for manually working it with a spectrum editor of some sort. RX, the stuff built-in to Samplitude/Sequoia, Algorithmix, something...

[Thor]

Sonic Studio Manual DeClick for pretty much any impulse noise here. Use it regularly.

Type B covers pretty much anything (will even re-synthesize complex passages if they're not too long), Type A is awesome on something like solo piano or voice, Type D and E are very useful for dropouts, spikes and crackles.

I have Rx as well as a pencil tool and other apps, but nothing comes close to the Sonic version. It's much more transparent.

People with ears I trust say that the Cedar tools are also very good.

Cheers,
Thor

[narcoman]

Cedar and Sonic are both excellent products - but at an order of magnitude in price above products like RX or renovator are really tools for those specialising in this area. For an everyday tool - RX is very good.

[Thor]

Gee sorry,

I thought this was the Mastering forum, where we were interested in the highest fidelity and quality possible. When did price become a factor when evaluating mastering tools? The OP asked for advice, and explained what he'd tried.

Sure, Bias SoundSoap and Waves X-stuff will work fine, as will Rx. Will it preserve the rest of the surrounding audio as well as Sonic and Cedar will, or be as powerful in removing a variety of problem noises? Not in my experience (and as I explained, I own and use both).

Most of the forensics guys I've spoken with are using the lower priced stuff, as they're usually more interested in intelligibility than transparency.

NoNoise has a 'light' version called FixIt that has the most common settings for the various algorithms, and is $995 for the package (DeCrackle, DeClick, DeNoise).

Manual DeClick is $795 and will do DeClicking and DeCrackling (Type E), but not BroadBand DeNoise (with NoisePrint).

I agree that the tools from Algorithmix (reNOVAtor) are amazing, and the ones included with Sequoia are also very good.

Cedar has the advantage that it can be run on a dedicated CPU and expanded for however many channels is needed, and algorithms can be added as well. I'm not sure of the price.

Cheers,
Thor

Originally Posted by narcoman

Cedar and Sonic are both excellent products - but at an order of magnitude in price above products like RX or renovator are really tools for those specialising in this area. For an everyday tool - RX is very good.

[narcoman]

..... when the OP is quoting products from Waves at a comparable price point.

[cooker]

Samplitude offers this for a reasonable price:

Cleaning & Restauration Suite > Shop > Samplitude

Anyone tryed it?

[24-96 Mastering]

Since you're talking about individual clicks (not vinyl restoration), I'd strongly suggest to do it manually.

If the clicks are easy to locate and short enough, just redraw the wave form using any decent wave editor.
If that's not possible or too time intensive, do it manually via spectral editor, using copy/paste. I do that a lot in Wavelab but you can also do that in Audition, with ReTouch on Sadie, reNOVAtor, or using izotope RX. In my experience, there's no automated process that works nearly as well.

[j-madd]

I was thinking of selecting the click waveform and only applying processing to the individual spike representing the click. I use Cubase for my processing, so I will have to see if there is a way to redraw a waveform. When you say spectral analysis, is this to see where (in Hz) the click is, then EQ that out? Thanks for all the suggestions!

Justin

[Adam Dempsey]

Originally Posted by j-madd

I was thinking of selecting the click waveform and only applying processing to the individual spike representing the click.

Definitely. In other words, manual declicking. I've had most success with Sonic and Cedar declick. Cedar's Dethump is also amazing (for pops & thumps, usually after a manual declick on the initial attack).. nothing like it, unless you go to Retouch spectral restoration or equivalent. No success with Isotope Rx, in my experience.

[siriusbliss]

Originally Posted by cooker

Samplitude offers this for a reasonable price:

Cleaning & Restauration Suite > Shop > Samplitude

Anyone tryed it?

Yes, I just used it yesterday.

It's a very good tool for wiping out horn blats, coughs, clicks, etc.

Much faster than doing it manually, or tricking crossfades, etc.

Greg

[narcoman]

Originally Posted by Adam Dempsey

Definitely. In other words, manual declicking. I've had most success with Sonic and Cedar declick. Cedar's Dethump is also amazing (for pops & thumps, usually after a manual declick on the initial attack).. nothing like it, unless you go to Retouch spectral restoration or equivalent. No success with Isotope Rx, in my experience.

really? Okay fair enough I cleaned up a shed load of unwanted bow clicks on a recent surround mix of the Matrix soundtracks and that worked incredibly well. The spectral repair algorithm is from the same set of PhDs that CEDARs is - although not as well implemented.

[imaverysoundman]

dont be lazy...
double click on the wav..zoom right in...the click will be represented as a straight line..use the pencil tool to redraw the click out....learned that while i had my crappy motu...used to give me clicks all the time...
tris147

[Philip Parenteau]

RX does that thing in minutes. IMO, don't get the Advanced... not worth the $$$, but the 400$ one works like a charm.

I have been using it for many different things, always amazed by the results.

[Shy]

Originally Posted by Philip Parenteau

RX does that thing in minutes. IMO, don't get the Advanced... not worth the $$$, but the 400$ one works like a charm.

I have been using it for many different things, always amazed by the results.

IMO do get the Advanced, the extra features, especially in the noise reduction, give much better results.

[lowland]

CEDAR Retouch and Dethump for SADiE here. Retouch is a great tool, but as has been pointed is expensive - the SADiE version was (and probably still is) around UKP2000. I rarely use Dethump, but for some things (especially LF nasties in classical music) it's great, though it's not often Retouch can't get those.

I love tools that make me look good! Retouch (and others I'm sure) can appear indistinguishable from magic: I'm currently working on a live worship album where on a couple of tunes the acoustic guitarist's fingernail is tapping the scratchplate - Retouch has made these disappear as if they were never there, the only downside being the usual one of deciding how deep to go with one-shot noise removal, where do you stop?

[Alexey Lukin]

Originally Posted by imaverysoundman

dont be lazy...
double click on the wav..zoom right in...the click will be represented as a straight line..use the pencil tool to redraw the click out....

In my experience, pencil never works as good as interpolation of the selected interval in RX or Sonic.

[narcoman]

Originally Posted by Alexey Lukin

In my experience, pencil never works as good as interpolation of the selected interval in RX or Sonic.

absolutely. Pencil drawing is nowhere near as powerful as using graphics algorithms to change the frequency structure... It's been an incredible revelation over the last few years!!

[Alexey Lukin]

I didn't actually mean spectral interpolation here. I just meant waveform interpolation (e.g. Declicker-Manual in RX) suitable for short wideband clicks. Spectral interpolation algorithms are suitable for longer and/or frequency-limited disturbances.

[wado1942]

One of many reasons I keep using Cool Edit Pro is it has a decent declicker. I just got a "talking heads" video to master and it was full of digital errors. The errors were always 0dBfs but the audio averaged around -18dBfs. So I set CEP's declicker to work only on a threshold of -3dBfs. It worked beautifully. I also have its "fill single click" option tied to a hot key. So if I'm mastering an album that has a click once & a while (very, VERY common for music recorded on PCs), I can just load it in CEP, lighlight the click and hit the "p" key.

[Key]

Manual with the aid of automated click/glitch finding. Also use an interpolation instead of trying to redraw the waveform manually.

[Adam Dempsey]

Originally Posted by narcoman

absolutely. Pencil drawing is nowhere near as powerful as using graphics algorithms to change the frequency structure... It's been an incredible revelation over the last few years!!

Sonic Solutions had its No Noise functioning in '94 (with 80 bit dsp if memory serves correct). Spectral processing a-la Retouch & ReNOVAtor, yes, the last few years.

[dcollins]

Originally Posted by Adam Dempsey

Sonic Solutions had its No Noise functioning in '94 (with 80 bit dsp if memory serves correct). Spectral processing a-la Retouch & ReNOVAtor, yes, the last few years.

NoNoise is closer to 1984 than 94. We used to have to fly to San Francisco where Andy Moorer had it running on a Sun workstation.

DC

[IIIrd]

Originally Posted by lowland

CEDAR Retouch

+1 In sadie

[j-madd]

"Manual with the aid of automated click/glitch finding. Also use an interpolation instead of trying to redraw the waveform manually. "

Sorry for the dumb question, but what is interpolation (is that cross-fade)?

Justin

[jayfrigo]

As has been said, Sonic's manual declicker is the best tool for this job. It basically looks to either side of the click and creates a replacement with appropriate spectral content. B-type is the most common for complex music waveforms, though the other types are invaluable for specialized situations (voice, a solo instrument that is very periodic etc...).

[jayfrigo]

Originally Posted by j-madd

"Manual with the aid of automated click/glitch finding. Also use an interpolation instead of trying to redraw the waveform manually. "

Sorry for the dumb question, but what is interpolation (is that cross-fade)?

Justin

Interpolation means it tries to figure out what was supposed to be there based on context; it re-synthesizes a matching audio replacement based on analysis of surrounding content.

[TheFirstThird]

MANUAL. It's painstaking, but it's the only way to preserve as much of the fidelity as HUMANLY possible. I do this all day long for a living. RX is great for some things, but it blurs the edges on all the higher frequencies if you're careless enough to just use some preset without using your EYES and EARS- you really have to understand the correlation between what the wave forms look like and what it sounds like and why; then remove corrupted areas manually, then listen to the results. It takes time, but the end result is worth it.