Audio Pops and Clicks

I’ve been doing quite a lot more mixing for other people recently, where they are recording using a DAW, editing it themselves and then sending the mixes to me to finish.

The one thing I think I’ve noticed more than anything else is bad audio edits. Although, typically, these aren’t obvious to me until we’re already in the middle of a mix. Usually they manifest themselves as a little click or pop that you can almost not hear at all – almost, but it’s still there.

Because I’m me, and I like things to be as good as they can be when I send them back to a client, I will usually edit the waveforms myself and fix the “pop” rather than sending it back.

This is a tom track from a song I mixed recently. It’s been edited by someone before the stems were exported to me, and I can hear a little click just after the tom hit. However, when you look at the audio editor (I mostly use Cubase) it’s not easy to see at the standard zoom.

Let’s zoom in a little closer… ah, there it is! Right angles and vertical lines in audio waveforms are quite unusual so you can see them if you look in the right place

If you zoom in close enough you can finally see why this sudden jump in value could cause some kind of problem! (I’ve changed the background colour to make the waveform more easy to see)

What I normally do is use the draw tool in Cubase audio editor, and smooth out the line to bridge the gap. It can be fiddly, and some audio clips will work better than others, but for fixing these little editing pops and clicks you don’t have to be that artistic – the pop is for a fraction of a second and as long as your new line is smooth-ish it’ll probably be OK. (The example here is just a mockup to show you the difference between before and after. Doing this for real you won’t see the old line)

When I revisited the track today I realise what I actually drew in was a lower swoop to the wave before making my way back to the spiky shaped bit – the cut was at around bar 38. You can see what I’ve drawn in is a bit wobbly but it sounds absolutely fine – and crucially there’s no annoying pop where the edit was!

Of course, the real secret is making audio edits without creating these little pops in the first place! When cutting/copying/pasting audio segments in your track, try to keep the possibility of pops in your mind, and try to cut in the space between notes, and at zero db (use the Snap to Zero Crossing tool) or consider using the Crossfade function.