Removing click embedding in audio

[Mark Baker]

Hi all. I'm working on a rough project and my friend recorded a nice little sax sample for me. Unfortunately, she recorded it with a metronome and it is baked into the audio file. Before I go back and beg for a retake (it was very much a favour for me), I thought maybe I could remove it from the audio. I can't find a "declicker" in Cakewalk, but there is a count in on the audio clip, and I was hoping to duplicate the track with the event, cut it, invert the phase and see how that worked.

Unfortunately, despite clicking the Phase Inverted option in the console for the track, it isn't as silent as I hoped. There is a slight audible difference but there is no gain reduction. Both tracks are on interleave mono and have no effects on them.

Any ideas or possible suggestions before I go back, cap in hand?

Thank you

[Will.]

Short answer is NO. 

Ask her to re-record it without the metronome. She can watch a tutorial on how to exclude the Metronome recording from the DAW she uses, but still have audible during recording. 

 

[Byron Dickens]

Perhaps iZotope RX can do it but even with extensive work, the results may still be less than perfect.

It will probably be easier to have it redone.

I wouldn't be hesitant at all to just tell the person that the track is unusable and please redo it without recording the metronome. I would also want to send a rough stereo mix - even of a mockup - to play along with.

 

THIS IS MY OPINION AND MY OPINION ONLY:

Even if you can, telling your talent "don't worry, I can fix it"  only encourages continued sloppiness.

[John Vere]

It's too bad the Musician was left on their own without professional help with set up. But this is how we learn. To me there's absolutely no question the track is garbage and needs re doing. I would only consider using it if the instrument was in the background and the metronome became part of the songs percussion section!  

Edited May 6, 2022 by John Vere

[User 905133]

I agree that if you can get the saxist to redo it without the metronome, that would be the way to go.

I did see videos showing how one of the Melda Production plug-ins could be used to analyze certain guitar noises (hum, string scrapes, etc.) and sort of remove/minimize them. I have not used that plug-in and I don't know if you could use it to isolate and analyze the metronome clicks and then apply that to remove them from the track/clip. If you absolutely cannot get a retake, an analyze and remove plugin might be worth a try.

One time I had a nature recording (birds and things) recorded on a little recorder which produced a little "bzzzt" like every few seconds.  I was able to edit those out in a short sample by finding the zero-crossings for the artifacts and removing the artifacts.  That kind of repair work is also a last choice option.

Edited May 6, 2022 by User 905133
to add another last choice option

[azslow3]

Sometime with a bit of luck (+ handwork) Melodyne (Editor/Studio) can separate sounds (components) on sufficient level to at the end (more or less) remove them. But for metronome in more then several seconds recording that is not reasonable approach...

[treesha]

if you are going to ask her to redo it, maybe letting her hear the recording herself if she has not listened to it, so she gets why it is not useable, and a gift of some chocolate might help too ha

[mark skinner]

 Free Reaper plugin "Reafir" (used in subtractive mode)  can build a noise profile of the click and remove it .  You need to have a section with the click isolated. Even a very short section looped will work. Even if you get the track redone this is a great tool to get for removing things like amp buzz/fan noise etc.  I used it this morning to completely remove a 50hz preamp hum on an acoustic guitar.  Kenny Goya does a good job on Reaper plugin tutorials on Youtube.         mark

[Mark Baker]

Cheers for the replies everyone. This is far from a professional project, and she literally recorded a 8 bar phrase on her sax to include in a demo I was working on (instead of the awful sounding VST/lack of knowledge I have). In the end, turns out that a touch of EQ-ing and it slotted in the mix even with the metronome as it was masked by the drum hits.

I still don't understand why inverting the phase didn't work though.