Use the Click/Pop Eliminator and DeClicker effects

In the most recent version of Audition, there is a new effect called the Click/Pop Eliminator, we're going to work on that effect in this lesson. We're also going to work with a DeClicker, which is both an effect and a diagnostic tool.
We're going to start with noises-speech.wav these are the Gettysburg Address segments that I recorded, and put some noise in there with the recordings. We're going to focus in this one here where I've got a vinyl record in the background, the kind of thing that you want to use the DeClicker and the Click/Pop Eliminator on, here we go, like this.
We want to somehow get rid of that vinyl record static there and the clicks and pops. So, we're going to start off by using the DeClicker. So, I'm going to select this area here just to kind of focus our attention on that. I'm going to zoom in on it by right-clicking here, dragging it across, tune in in that section.Now, I want to use the DeClicker. I'm going to go to Effects, under Effects, you've got a Diagnostics section and there are four things there, one of which is the DeClicker (process). I'm not going to click on it just yet, because I want to show you one other way here.
Down under Noise Reduction / Restoration, there's an Automatic Click Remover...If you open that up, you see this controller here, Threshold and Complexity. Remember that, because that is the controller for the DeClicker. I'll close that down. And now, we'll find the DeClicker in kind of the normal way. Because it's a diagnostic tool, you open up the Diagnostics panel. And to access a panel that you don't see here, you go to Window, that refines the panels and there's the Diagnostics panel. Opens up the panel here, and in this drop-down list there are those four effects you saw moments ago here inside the Effects group.
It's a little confusing that they're in two different places, but there you go. All right, so let's go back over here. The drop-down list has these four effects, don't confuse the DeClicker and the DeClipper. The DeClipper deals with clipped audio, that is audio that's recorded too loudly, and the top and the bottom of the waveform have been cut off. But we're dealing with the DeClicker here, so just focus on that.You can choose some Presets, we're going to go with (Default). The presets adjust just these two settings here: Threshold and Complexity, right now they're set here, to the (Default),which is kind of a mid-range. If I change it to Heavy Reduction, you'll see these guys slide around. See this number goes down, the lower the number, the more things it finds.Complexity is that it sort of widens the scope of its search. So Heavy means that you find many things that are wrong, (Default) kind of lightens that load, so we'll go to (Default) here. Once you choose your settings, then you just scan it. Now, it's going to scan this clip here, click on Scan, and it immediately finds 155 problems. Those problems presumably are these little bits of static there and little clicks, and it'd be nice if you just repair these guys, and they all go away. But they won't I'm afraid, but we'll give it the old college try.
There's a little button over here that says Repair All. You can repair them one at a time or you can repair all. If you select one of them, it moves the Current Time Indicator to that one. And if you click on this little magnifying glass, it zooms in on it. But I'm going to tell you, I don't really see any problem there. Nevertheless, I'm going to zoom back out again and reselect this whole zone there, just in case we work on the whole thing later.
Now, I've got these guys selected. Click on Repair All. And look at the differences there. Do you see a difference? I'm going to look at this thing again, I'm going to undo that and redo that, so I do controller Command Z to undo that, you do see that some go away there. I'm going to Repair All again and watch right here, you will see some of those clicks go away - Repair All. And it got rid of a few of them, but certainly not all of them. Let's listen to it here and see what it sounds like.
Little static about here. Still got quite a few little clicks there, but the static is present and still quite a few clicks. Let's scan it again, just click on Scan, does the same thing, now there are 77 problems, so it really didn't get rid of all of them, right? But it did kind of reduce their magnitude. So, we'll repair all of them again. It's getting a little bit better each time, but you still see plenty of clicks, so you can see the little vertical lines are indicating some kind of a click there. You still see the static, all this little sort of noisy looking things there.We can do this a few more times, let's just up the ante here to Heavy Reduction. Now let's scan it, and it finds 500 problems, 499, wow, really? Let's click on Repair All, and you know, hardly any difference though. Let's play it, see what it sounds like. Not really something that's going to make much difference. So, you wouldn't want to rely on the DeClicker to get rid of all that static and all those clicks. I'm going to do Control or Command Z a few times hereto go back to the starting point. You'd be able to tell we're back on the starting point when that asterisk goes away, because that tells you you haven't changed anything. So, one, two, three, here we go, we're back to the starting point now.Let's try the Click/Pop Eliminator with this part of the file. You find it under Effects,Noise Reduction / Restoration, here's the Click/Pop Eliminator (process)...It's a new effect in the latest version of Audition. It has some presets as well and a whole lot of controls here, not all of which I'll explain, but let's talk about a few of them.
Let's start off by looking at a preset. We've got Constant Hiss and Crackle. Let's choose that preset. Now when we opened up the Click/Pop Eliminator, you notice we changed views here to the Preview Editor. It does that because my preferences are set so that any effect that changes the duration of a clip will open up the Preview Editor. But in fact, the Click/Pop Eliminator does not change the duration of the clip.
So, let's just take a look at the before and the after here. Here's the before, there's the after. So, it looks like it's having some effect here. It does seem to be removing some of the stuff, let's just play this and see what it sounds like. So, it does remove quite a bit of those clicks and some of that static, but it does change the quality of the audio, as you can hear there.
Let's apply it once here like this. It takes a while to do it. All right, let's just play this now. Yeah, that's not perfect, but let's try it again. Go back to Effects,Noise Reduction / Restoration and Click/Pop Eliminator (process)...It switches back to the Preview Editor again. It's using this preset, let's try a different preset.
We'll go to Old Record - Quiet Audio, and see how that goes. It's now doing a little preview here again. Looks like it didn't make much difference this time. Let's up the ante here by saying Find More and Fix More. Let's try that and see what it sounds like. So, it does get rid of a lot of them, so I'll click Apply. And now, I think our work is done.
To get rid of the rest of this stuff, we probably want to use the Noise Reduction effect, so I'm going to quickly do that, I'm just going to select this area here. Go to Effects, Noise Reduction / Restoration Go to Noise Reduction (process)..., click on the Capture Noise Print, like so, and we'll just select this part of the clip there, like so. We'll see what that sounds like. So, it's obviously taking care of all of the static.Now, we probably want to knock it down a little bit because it's so dramatic, the way it affects the audio. I really can't get rid of the stuff over the voice that well. So, it's working reasonably well, but the audio quality really is affected.
Let's try this on music and see what that's like. Go to the noises-music.wav file, do the same routine, you've got this guy selected already because of where the position was of the Time Selection tool, like so. This time, let's do the Noise Reduction first and then do the Click/Pop Eliminator. So, I'm going over here, and select just this part, right there at the end where I don't see any clicks, I just see static, and we'll have that be the noise print.
Go to Effects, Noise Reduction / Restoration, Noise Reduction (process)...,click on that to get the noise print. Let's select the whole segment here. And let's test that out, see what it sounds like. So, you can see there's still a little bit of static, but not much when you get to the end here. That sounds like almost silent there. So, we don't really need it, that be quite so strong but that's the way to get started. Try that again. All right, so I'm going to click Apply. Let's take a look at it now. So pretty good.
Some clicks and pops are left, so let's try the Click/Pop Eliminator and see if that makes a difference now, and I have a feeling that the big ones that are left here, the ones that are noisy like this, are not going to be affected by the Click/Pop Eliminator. That's something you need to do manually on a per click basis, but we're going to give it a try anyways.
Go to Effects, now here again and go to the Click/Pop Eliminator (process)...And let's just have this be the (Default) setting. And we'll give this a try, we'll see if it makes a difference. Click this little preview. And basically, hearing the same things as before, I don't hear any real difference there. I'm hearing a big click, like this one right there. They're not being affected at all here.
Let's go to Constant Hiss and Crack, I'll try that one. Takes a while to do the preview. All right, let's play this now. It really, really damages the audio. So, we'll try one more little thing here. We go to the Old Record - Quiet Audio, and we'll have it Find More things, Fix More things, see how that goes. Go back to the beginning.Basically, all in all, it got rid of almost everything here, and I think it just improved the quality just a little bit. The Noise Reduction did a lot of work and then the Click/Pop Eliminator sort of did the fine-tuning here at the end.