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Audio Repair 101: Clicks, Crackles, Pops

Audio Repair 101: Clicks, Crackles, Pops

May 03, 2018

Get access to a comprehensive noise reduction guide by Emmy®-winning dialogue editor John Purcell. Learn how to control transient noises: the clicks, crackles, beeps, lip smacks, dolly squeaks and footsteps that may plague your recording.

Audio Repair 101: Clicks, Crackles, Pops

This is part 2 in a 3-part series:

Noise Reduction Basics: Understand kinds of noises and how to control them
Controlling transient noises: Clicks, crackles, pops
Ambient Noise: Identifying and removing tonal and broadband noise

In Part 2, you’ll learn how to:

Manually remove transient noises (and what to avoid while doing so)
Remove transient noises using a dedicated plugin
Control common mic boom ‘thud’

This is written from the perspective of film dialogue postproduction, but noise is noise, so what you learn can be applied to other audio recordings as well.

What are transient noises?

Transient noises range from the tiniest clicks and crackles to beeps and lip smacks to longer interruptions like dolly squeaks and footsteps. They’re everywhere in your field recordings. This article will help you locate and control them.

Transient noises can be big or small and they can occur anywhere in a track. If you’re lucky, most of them will fall between words: that makes for an easy fix. If they’re longer or more complicated or sitting no top of words, they’re harder to deal with. Transient sounds are removed with surgery rather than...

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