Erasing audio peaks?

Sorry for the poor description, but I'm unsure of the proper terminology which in turn, is preventing me from searching for the solution.

This is the problem,
there are tall, very narrow spikes in the bass guitar audio track and I would like to use an editing tool to manually erase them. Can someone  tell what the actual process is called so that I can find it in the documentation? I even have the Sonar x1 Power book and can't find it there either.

Thanks.

Interesting this post just came up because I'm involved in the same predicament at the moment with a guitar track. Processing the gain isn't necessarily the ideal solution to this task. You should be able to draw out, or erase as the OP put it, just the peaks without reducing the overall volume.
 
That would be a good feature request. A few more comprehensive editing tools. Im somewhat surprised you can't do this within Sonar but I guess the riddle is solved... I was looking all over the help file and didn't find jack. I was getting ready to post much the same the question when I saw this post... synchronicity at it's best.
 
Edit: Will a gain envelope reduce just the peaks? Or will that also reduce the overall volume of the track/clip?

M@ B


Thanks Scott. Your ears must ring when your book gets mentioned . Great book BTW.
I remember some time ago seeing this process in a youtube vid. Not sure what software was being used to do it though, may have been PT, don't know. I assumed this was a universal DAW feature.

Yes Zuma you are right, this looks like a good feature request.

The funny part is that you could do that in the good old Cakewalk Pro Audio days in the audio view, using the good old pencil tool. ;)

Rain

M@ B


Yes Zuma you are right, this looks like a good feature request.

The funny part is that you could do that in the good old Cakewalk Pro Audio days in the audio view, using the good old pencil tool. ;)

If they felt it was unnecessary and removed it years ago, then I guess there's slim chance of them adding it back as an improvement. I could sure use it now, there's no option to retrack it.

You can use the Clip Gain envelope to tame your peaks, it does what your asking.

HTH

Tom

Because compression , like gain, is going to process the entire track or clip and effect the dynamics. I don't want any compression period on my guitar tracks. I'm talking about a transient caused by the initial snap of a string. If you have ever used the pencil tool to draw out such noise you will understand why it is desirable  and preferable to compression or other processing.

As said above, if the overs are long enough you'll get distorition.  Otherwise just use an envelope.  That can be tedious, but works.  It also taught me to leave more headroom - most of the time.

@

M@ B

Sidroe


I am confused about these peaks. Are they peaks where the audio went over 0, if so, anytime I ever had a peak like that it caused a terrible digital distortion rendering the signal useless. My other observation is I know that sometimes, for whatever reason, sometimes an older Cake product would draw a vertical line in the waveform that would look like a peak. Then when you would expand the wave out to edit, it was not a peak at all. I guess what I'm saying is if it isn't screwing up the audio with some kind of unwanted noise, why not just try to control it with some compression?

These peaks did not go over 0 in the recording, though they came pretty close, so the track is not ruined. I believe that they are occasional clips in the preamp when the bass player was a little too aggressive during the take.

The reason I'd rather not use compression to fix it is because in order to catch all of the spike, the compression would really squash the tone and air out of the bass track. Simply erasing only the spikes with the pencil tool would leave the rest of the audio undisturbed; kind of like trimming only a handful of stray "alfalfa hairs" instead of getting a whole haircut.

Same here. No overs, just a few annoying string transients that neither compression nor gain processing is gonna totally get rid of. I've reduced it to where it's not so noticeable but it would be preferable to me to get rid of it entirely via editing. I did try a pop/click remover but again, it processes the entire clip. I'm looking into editors at the moment... also ProTools as well.

I think it would be useful to be able to save presets in the Fade/Envelope process. This thread may be an example of why it would be useful. If you could save a "u" shape drawn in the window (as at number 4 below) which starts at full gain then dips and back up again, dipping and rising in a curve down to whichever 'percentage' you want it to be.
Also handy for reducing noisy breathing in vocals: dips down and back up to 100% as a "u" shaped curve.
From the help manual:
1.  Select the audio data to be affected.
2.  Choose Process > Apply Effect > Fade/Envelope to open the Fade/Envelope dialog box.
3.  Select an envelope from the drop-down list.
4.  If desired, manipulate the curve as described in the table above.
5.  Click OK.
SONAR applies the fade to the selected audio data.