Invisible pops where track was spliced...

[Ally007]

There's a track in my latest project that I spliced, and now there are audible pops occurring at those points, However, there is no detectable anomaly in the waveform that I can see, at any magnification. Has anyone else experienced this, and how did you overcome it? I'm hoping to avoid shelling out for a pop-remover plugin which might or might not do the trick anyway...

[Watchful]

This is very common in any digital audio editing platform. Tips:

1. Trim a little more off the ends; this can sometimes make pops worse, though.

2. Fade out the end of the first clip and fade in the start of the following clip. Just fade enough so that your audio isn't affected. If you keep your fades to about 20-30ms at each end, you can probably eliminate the pops completely.

3. If you've already merged the clips into a new track, try Waveforms "remove silence" macro. Right-click on the clip and it should be in the flyout menu. This will slice your clip into little pieces, but does an outstanding job. You can always merge the clips back into one clip afterward and get a surprisingly pristine track.

[Ally007]

This is very common in any digital audio editing platform. Tips:

1. Trim a little more off the ends; this can sometimes make pops worse, though.

2. Fade out the end of the first clip and fade in the start of the following clip. Just fade enough so that your audio isn't affected. If you keep your fades to about 20-30ms at each end, you can probably eliminate the pops completely.

3. If you've already merged the clips into a new track, try Waveforms "remove silence" macro. Right-click on the clip and it should be in the flyout menu. This will slice your clip into little pieces, but does an outstanding job. You can always merge the clips back into one clip afterward and get a surprisingly pristine track.

Many thanks for the tips, W. I already tried trimming a little more off the ends but the pops remained. Your other suggestion sounded hopeful, but I don't see any 'remove silence' option when I right-click on the clip.

[Watchful]

Hmm. I don't know if this is a Pro-only option. Not sure if you're using Free, but thought this was baked into all versions.



I've put a link to a tutorial on how to use it.

Definitely try the fade out/fade in trick as that should definitely do it. Do you know how to do clip fades? If you zoom in a bit on an audio clip, you should see little white triangles on the left and right edges of the clip. Drag either toward the center of the clip to make a fade in or fade out.

[dysjoint]

In settings you can choose how much to apply as a default 'edge fade'
10 ms should be generally be enough. (at the start of a percussive clip you may still want to zoom in and check you're not fading into the first Transient)

Now you can add that option to a quick actions bar, or if you are going to use it all the time like I do, set up keyboard shortcuts.

I use S, shift-S (split, add edge fade) which I wasn't the default, I changed it to be as fast as possible. It's that important, if you chop loads. If you merge or render with those clicks still there......... I've had to slap myself a few times, put it that way.

[midklang]

Hi, zoom in and try to cut when the peak curve goes through zero.
horst

[Ally007]

Hmm. I don't know if this is a Pro-only option. Not sure if you're using Free, but thought this was baked into all versions.

Thanks, but the feature doesn't seem to be in my version of TW. I tried starting a new project, and still don't see that option when I right-click on a selected track. As you say, maybe it's a Pro feature. There is no mention of the feature in the TW User Guide either, so I'm not sure what's going on...

[Ally007]

Hi, zoom in and try to cut when the peak curve goes through zero.
horst

Thank you; that seems like good advice. It would be easier if there was a horizontal zero-point line to define where the zero point is, exactly...

[Ally007]

In settings you can choose how much to apply as a default 'edge fade'
10 ms should be generally be enough. (at the start of a percussive clip you may still want to zoom in and check you're not fading into the first Transient)

Now you can add that option to a quick actions bar, or if you are going to use it all the time like I do, set up keyboard shortcuts.

I use S, shift-S (split, add edge fade) which I wasn't the default, I changed it to be as fast as possible. It's that important, if you chop loads. If you merge or render with those clicks still there......... I've had to slap myself a few times, put it that way.

Good suggestion - thank you. I will try that in future if I still experience the problem after splicing. I wish I could go back in time and do it on my current project (back when I could still undo my splices), because I no longer know precisely where the splices were made, and it's not evident from the visual waveform. Anyway, thanks to the great suggestions shared here, I'm now probably able to avoid the issue in future.

I noticed that Cubase has a neat feature called 'Spectral Layers' that throws up another type of waveform representation in which unwanted noises can be seen more obviously and attenuated. I'm not sure if TW has anything similar. If so, I haven't found it yet.