Why does stretching an audio clip cause clicking?

[T Boog]

Cheers guys.  Often times when I stretch an audio clip then play it back, I get clicking/popping sounds. This also frequently happens when I add effects to a clip. 

A few minutes ago, I stretched an audio clip and it started clicking. But this time I tried something new....   I undid the stretched edit, then I bounced the clip to itself first. Then I stretched the clip and it worked perfectly with no clicking.

I realized that I mostly have this clicking problem on my lead vocal track. And my lead vocal tracks are usually chopped up into dozens & dozens of clips. I'm probably answering my own question but is this the likely cause of the clicking problem (The fact that there's SO many clips on the track)?  And if so, can someone briefly explain to me why bouncing the clip back to itself helps correct this problem?  Thanks! 

[Bristol_Jonesey]

As you've found out, rendering a clip by bouncing utilises a different algorithm - offline vs online.

This makes a world of difference.

[Will.]

5 hours ago, T Boog said:

Cheers guys.  Often times when I stretch an audio clip then play it back, I get clicking/popping sounds. This also frequently happens when I add effects to a clip. 

A few minutes ago, I stretched an audio clip and it started clicking. But this time I tried something new....   I undid the stretched edit, then I bounced the clip to itself first. Then I stretched the clip and it worked perfectly with no clicking.

I realized that I mostly have this clicking problem on my lead vocal track. And my lead vocal tracks are usually chopped up into dozens & dozens of clips. I'm probably answering my own question but is this the likely cause of the clicking problem (The fact that there's SO many clips on the track)?  And if so, can someone briefly explain to me why bouncing the clip back to itself helps correct this problem?  Thanks! 

Thats mainly because the clip wasn't cut at a zero-crossing point within the sound wave - so there’s an abrupt change that is happening on the clip. Cakewalk still see the clip as a whole clip, but just in a cropped version. When you bounce the region, the DAW basically isolates that part and knows where to focus the algorithm on entirely for a smoother operation. 

What you want to do is make a cut, do a small fade until you can't hear the clipping anymore. Depending on the creativity you're introducing, most times it won't be necessary to bounce the clip once it has a fade on where the cuts were made. Try to aim your cuts on that zero-crossing point in the waveform though. You might never use a crossfade anymore. 

Edited May 26 by Will.

[T Boog]

24 minutes ago, Will. said:

Cakewalk still see the clip as a whole clip, but just in a cropped version. When you bounce the region, the DAW basically isolates that part and knows where to focus the algorithm on entirely for a smoother operation. 

Wow Will!  Sometimes I forget about that. Yeah, a lot of those little clips are actually big clips just cropped down. And I bet the clips that I've applied Melodyne to are the ones that don't give me any problems because they've already been rendered to small clips. Thanks for that man!

[T Boog]

2 hours ago, Bristol_Jonesey said:

offline vs online.

Thanks Jonesey. Fwiw, before I posted this, I looked online to find an answer and it mentioned the offline vs online thing. But I had no idea what that meant 😄.  I'm gonna have to research that some more.  Thanks man

[Will.]

5 minutes ago, T Boog said:

Thanks for that man!

My pleasure. 

[Amberwolf]

On 5/26/2025 at 7:33 AM, Will. said:

 Try to aim your cuts on that zero-crossing point in the waveform though. You might never use a crossfade anymore. 

Also, if you are dealing with mono audio (vs stereo), you can turn on snap to grid, turn off Musical Time, switch from Move By to Move To, and turn on just Audio Zero Crossings in the landmarks, and use max Magnetic Strength.   

I don't know what the snap dialog looks like these days, but in my ancient version these settings make it relatively easy to avoid clicks from non-zero-crossing cuts of audio clips; if for whatever reason I didn't cut at one to start with I can just slip edit until it "gets sticky" and let go and it will be where it needs to be.  

Unfortunately with stereo clips it's not very often that both channels have a zero crossing in exactly the same place, so this trick doesn't really work very well for those. 

[T Boog]

1 hour ago, Amberwolf said:

Also, if you are dealing with mono audio (vs stereo), you can turn on snap to grid, turn off Musical Time, switch from Move By to Move To, and turn on just Audio Zero Crossings in the landmarks, and use max Magnetic Strength.   

Thanks Wolf. But if you don't mind me asking, what the hell led you to this old thread? 😄

[Amberwolf]

2 hours ago, T Boog said:

Thanks Wolf. But if you don't mind me asking, what the hell led you to this old thread? 😄

a spam post that appears to have since been removed. 

figured while i was in the thread i might as well post a useful tidbit...

 

(many spammers quote someone's long post, so that most of the quote is not visible unless you click the expander, and then edit an obvious spam link or phrase (or lots of them) into the quote, where it won't be seen 99% of the time as nobody expands the quotes, just reads the responses.   so they get their spam in there where a websearch robot will find it for seo purposes, but where moderators and members of a forum almost never will notice, so it stays up at least long enough to do the job of making the linked / keyworded site(s) rank higher in search engines as those rankings are based on how many other sites link to those sites (rather than how many people actually used a search result, or searched for that site, etc).  i'm an admin over on endless sphere in charge of spam control more or less, so i've seen practically everything so far there in the last decade and a half or so)  

Edited 4 hours ago by Amberwolf

[T Boog]

25 minutes ago, Amberwolf said:

i'm an admin over on endless sphere in charge of spam control

I believe you! 😄

I def was not expecting that response. You just gave me a detailed lesson in spamming. I don't think chatGPT could've answered that any better. Bravo Sir 👏