GUITAR CRACKLE - Cleanup Solutions?

OK, so I can't have this track re-recorded, and there are some slightly discernable crackles occasionally with the track. Effects have been printed unfortunately.

Anything in SONAR, plugins, etc. I can do to clean it up?

Thanks in advance.
Scott

Or the ever popular "I meant to do that" plugin. Me, I like that kind of thing sometimes.

What caused the crackling? Was it in the source (guitar) or the audio file?

Def. the source. Well, my guitarist apparently recorded with LOTS of distortion; it's a fairly noisy track - it almost sounds like he mic'd his amp. I'm going to ask him. It's not awful by any means, and it doesn't clip!!! Just there are these extremely high crackles from time to time, just a pop at a time. I tried a deEsser and that didn't work. I guess I'll try the SONITUS noise gate.

Maybe I can describe it from a visual standpoint. It's like if you had a picture of a wav file, and there were a few black dots floating around the outer perimeters of the solid black wav picture. I'd like to get rid of those dots.

Maybe I can describe it from a visual standpoint. It's like if you had a picture of a wav file, and there were a few black dots floating around the outer perimeters of the solid black wav picture. I'd like to get rid of those dots.

You could try using a "notch filter" with a very tight Q setting...

ORIGINAL: stratcat33511

reinstall the audio card driver

OR it's a cable (it happened to me )

Naaahhh!!
It's only that one track!!!

Extremist!!!

Soundforge? I should be so lucky as to have that available. It would be nice to be able to just ERASE it! Maybe someday Photoshop technology will be incorported into SONAR, only with audio results instead of visual.

You could try using a "notch filter" with a very tight Q setting...

Papa,
Not familiar with this technique. Would you mind walking me through it (if it's not too much trouble).

Unless you simply don't want to take the time, as mentioned above, zooming in on the culprits and deleteing them or replaceing them should work nicely.

Sorry for my ignorance, but I'm more than willing to take the time to do this. It's only a 1 minute part.

What VIEW would I do this in? Is it in the PDF manual? What page? Can I just double click on it?

ORIGINAL: spindlebox

Unless you simply don't want to take the time, as mentioned above, zooming in on the culprits and deleteing them or replaceing them should work nicely.

Sorry for my ignorance, but I'm more than willing to take the time to do this. It's only a 1 minute part.

What VIEW would I do this in? Is it in the PDF manual? What page? Can I just double click on it?

Hi spindlebox,

What you need to do is isolate each of the clicks. One at a time of course. You can do this by playing repeatedly over the spots and keep zooming in or use the scrub tool to try and isolate it. The thing is to try to Zoom in on the location. If it's a click or pop, like you describe, it should stand out and be very easy to see. It should show up as rather abrupt spikes in the and will probably only be a few samples long.

Like I said, usually spikes like this will only be a few samples long and you can use Alt-Left-Mouse to select it (each side of the spike) and delete it. It souldn't hurt if you select an extra sample on each side. I can't remember what it's called but make sure you don't have Sonar set to delete the hole too (everything to the right move forward).

Deleteing a little spike usually works fine with out any noticable cliks but if the deleted hole it self is still noticable you can copy and past a very short section in front of the hole that's left and work it in. This requires a little more skill and knowledge but can usually be done quite satisfactorally.

Give this a try and see what happens and if you need a little more help, we're all here. By the way backup the track your going to work on. That's just good policy and I know you know that.

T.S.

Heh heh, well while I was typeing this out you fixed it. However, maybe for future reference.

Hey spindlebox, by all means check out the way I describe. It can indeed come in handy down the road. I've ran into situations like this many times and the worst part of it is that you never know where it might come from.

T.S.

PS> It doesn't suprise me that it sounded a bit muffled. I don't know what freq you cut but I would think it would influence the overall sound. You really need a very, very narrow band cut to do this.

"I asked my guitarist to redo it and to watch his signal-to-noise ratio, gain management, etc. I can wait another day or two for a fixed track."

Good!

while your waiting on him here's some inspirational reading:

http://www.thegardentapes.co.uk/

best,
mike

I offered it as encouragement... it's never too late to re-record a track.

I'm very glad you took a look and found it interesting.

best,
mike