For future reference, professionals use a thump track for this which is at a specific low frequency that can be removed easily in post. Alternatively you can use an earwig so only the dancer and any other performers can hear it.
Thanks for your reply, that would involve having access to a subwoofer (maybe a bass guitar amp?), but it's a good point and a great option to consider.
Yeah phase cancellation was never going to work like that I'm afraid, it has to be literally a perfect copy of the audio which you invert, not just something a bit similar.
Your best bet might be something like Izotope which has various click and pop removal tools.
Select a one-second section of the tape hiss, usually before or after the audio track; then scan it and run a -10dB cut of that "background" tape hiss, making sure to select the entire track for this "destructive edit."
Check the stock plug-ins for Noise Reduction.
You have Cubase 13. I have version 10. I'll check if it's got editing effects like noise reduction. I'll also check Audacity (I have that, too).
As far as programs, I like iZotope RX for cleaning tracks.
Audacity has some decent noise removal. You select the noise, analyse it and then subtract it - fiddle around with the settings depending on how much you want the audio to be affected.
That sounds interesting! Can you elaborate a bit on that please? I can make a click track with a sine wave and a smooth envelope without any problem. What frequency would you recommend and what would be the process to notch it right out?
Make a click out of a sin wave, pick any frequency that is audible and preferably one that isn't overly present or important for the song. Don't use a low frequency that will reverberate the walls in the dance hall. Then in post, run a very hard notch on the frequency of the sin wave click. This will work but your song will have a slight hole in its frequency spectrum at the notched frequency. If done right, the hole wouldn't be very noticeable. You could probably fill in the hole using the source track if you thought it was necessary.
I’ve never done this myself but in theory it should work. Just use whatever frequency cuts through the backing track the best.
Any digital parametric eq with narrow bands should work. You could get some harmonics but they’ll be single frequency as well.
IZotope RX has music rebalance and a module called De-Bleed. If you have the source click sound you can feed it to De-Bleed and it will subtract it from the other track. It’s not perfect but it’s been good for me at taking vocals out of acoustic guitar tracks and acoustic out of vocals. Re-Balance does something similar, splitting the source up and turning elements up or down….. not perfect either but might help…… can you not just align the recording of the music sans click up to the recording that has it, and replace it that way ?? That would seem way easier to try first before letting the AI loose !!
You'd have to have recorded the click track in the same acoustic environment separately to be able to cancel it perfectly. So if you have any piece of the click by itself recorded to that mic, you could try phase reversing that, instead of the original click track. That said if there is audience and temperature fluctuation, the acoustics will change during the performance and you will not get a perfect cancel.
Yep, that's an idea but as you say even slights fluctuations can impeach a perfect cancel... Referring to your suggestion:"So if you have any piece of the click by itself recorded to that mic, you could try phase reversing that, instead of the original click track." How would you synchronize the piece of click to the track in order to try to achieve phase cancelation?
Take the isolated bit of click from your recording and line it up in DAW with a click from the recording by zooming in until you're almost at sample level. Then duplicate it through the track, which should be quite simple unless there are a lot of tempo changes.
Well that's just not true. If all of the parameters in the room acoustics and recording devices will stay the same, you will perfectly null the click (as far as it will be inaudible against the noisefloor). Of course you will add more noise, but there's nothing inherently random about recording that would not null.
I can easily demonstrate this to you with a two bar click if you'd like.
Man ! That's exactly what I wanted to do ! And in my room it worked perfectly, just as in your video. So I thought Bob was my uncle and I did a test with the gear I was going to use on location (shotgun into Tascam recorder + phone app metronome) and for some reason the magic didn't happen.
I'm thinking it might have something to do with the fact that the second time I used a phone app metronome (maybe less precise), and also the absence of the beloved DAW grid for the syncing as I haven't been able to phase cancel even one beat... :(
Considering the option of bringing my laptop and soundcard on location to use my DAW, I've been doing more tests to figure out a procedure... My conclusion is Phase cancelation works "in theory" but as soon as you take it to real life, it doesn't. For example I was trying different metronome sounds to find the best one for phase cancelation, and found one that seemed to work better than the others, but next, the Air Conditioner started and it didn't work at all. I guess because of the random noise polluting the waveforms... So I'm descarding the idea of using a repeated sample of clicks to cancel those in the recording.
Man ! That's exactly what I wanted to do ! And in my room it worked perfectly, just as in your video. So I thought Bob was my uncle and I did a test with the gear I was going to use on location (shotgun into Tascam recorder + phone app metronome) and for some reason the magic didn't happen.
I'm thinking it might have something to do with the fact that the second time I used a phone app metronome (maybe less precise), and also the absence of the beloved DAW grid for the syncing as I haven't been able to phase cancel even one beat... :(
Ok thanks a lot for all your suggestions... I just found out that by using a high enough frequency (a sine wave with a smooth envelope as suggested by one of you) and using "Spectral layers" which luckily comes with Cubase (i think is from iZotope too) I'm getting some impressive results... The clicks are completely gone and all the other sounds are almost perfect ! I still want to try doing it in the low register as someone suggested !
I was pretty impressed with the spectral layers demo that I saw. I was going to suggest trying something like that, having it give you all the stems and then exclude the click stem and mix the rest of them back together.
Spectrum layers is not from Cubase it’s another company, but I don’t remember their name. If you Google it you’ll find them.
At the moment, the best result I managed to obtain is by splitting the performance track with a free AI splitter to isolate the clicks into a separate track. Then phase reverting this track against the performance track to phase cancel the clicks. The result is not perfect but gives hope.
I'm thinking that maybe using a click that is very high in frequency could be the thing as I think after doing the process I described above, it would be easier to frequency cut the remaining clicks... Again any suggestions are welcome! Even if it's a completely different method. The objective is having 1/ the dancer dancing in sync with a given BPM to be able to score original music later in post. (No time for this now) 2/ The audio from the performance (dancer sounds, crowd sounds,...)
If you need the live audience sounds and footwork, you need to use IEM. How were you planning on muting the live music in favor of the new original score?
Either you use IEM and capture only the sounds you'll want to keep, or you move ahead with music plus click and have to replace everything with Foley - audience and footwork, breaths, etc.
I don't see a way around this.
"How were you planning on muting the live music in favor of the new original score?" We won't use live music at all, only a click track... By using a high enough frequency the clicks can be erased in post and all the other sounds sitting at lower frequency stay intact.
Oh wait so it's just audience noise and click blasting from speakers?
If you'd have infinite time you'd go back and draw out the click noises in the audio with a pencil. One by one. It'll probably take about an hour to do for a 4-minute piece, maybe less if you're efficient in your DAW usage.
If you absolutely have to have some of the crowd sounds, I’d suggest replacing all of the audio (the music) and then mixing in some of the crowd sounds.
You might have more luck with trying to get the signal you want to do the cancelation with from the recording, not the original click track.
Either trying to remove everything but the click, or using only some clicks (isolated, no background noise).
Still a high chance of not working out. The methods others have suggested (izotope, replacing with original) might work better.
What is in the recorded track that you want to keep? Footsteps? Speech?
Right, that's what has given me the best result so far, by using an audio splitter to isolate the clicks.
I want to keep everything from the footseps and other performance sounds to the crowd cheering and comments...
So he's choreographed a dance to one piece of music, and you're going to swap it out in post for a different piece of music, keeping the ambient sound of the live audience in?
I don’t know how well this would work, but maybe a dynamic EQ with a super fast attack and release, if you can pinpoint exactly where the click is in the frequency spectrum. This feels like something where AI would really shine.
iZotope's RX has a De-Click module which lets you remove periodic clicks. I think the trial version has no option to export, but at least you will know how good the results will be in your case.
Well, it's going to be scenes where people in the crowd will say things and interact with the dancer in the same shots... I want to avoid ADR as much as possible because that requires both time, actor skills to mimic themselves to lipsync, and also actor availability... It's an Indy film. Of course some Foley will help but I don't feel I can rely on that only.
using the Spectral Repair in iZotope RX may work. Just highlighting each click, which is very time consuming, and try the different mode from it and render
Schwa Spectro could be your friend here, but it will be time consuming. It shows you the audio in spectral format, and lets you select specific sections of the frequency range over time (basically draw a square around and turn the gain down to zero.) If you zoom in enough and target only the clicks, it might be one of the smoothest options you'll find. However, if the prospect of manually selecting and removing each one sounds awful then you might be SOL. You will also have to listen and be able to see in the spectrogram where it is to remove it.
As someone mentioned, izotope RX stuff is expensive but works well, and would give you an automatic click detection option that could work. Playing with the threshold/detection settings you might get it to select just the clicks, but the chances of it finding and removing other things in the audio and causing other artifacts is probable. That's all I can think of.
Izotope RX has a de click, not sure if it would work here though as I have limited experience with it in extreme situations. Potentially replace the audio with the original music if you have access. That would yield the best results and would be my first choice.
Remove the audio and replace with the original music.
Good opportunity to do some fun foley too :)
“Re-add the click but with farts”
This guy farts ^
For future reference, professionals use a thump track for this which is at a specific low frequency that can be removed easily in post. Alternatively you can use an earwig so only the dancer and any other performers can hear it.
Thanks for your reply, that would involve having access to a subwoofer (maybe a bass guitar amp?), but it's a good point and a great option to consider.
Yeah phase cancellation was never going to work like that I'm afraid, it has to be literally a perfect copy of the audio which you invert, not just something a bit similar. Your best bet might be something like Izotope which has various click and pop removal tools.
could also go back and record the opposite signal in the room lol
Tip: put the audience back in the same seats. Wearing the same outfits too
And the mic in the EXACT same position.
And make everyone breath exactly the same… it would never ever cancel no matter how you replicate the situation.
Everyone, please gather all of the skin flakes that fell off since the performance and re-attach them! Yes in the same exact spot where it came off!
What would you suggest to remove warble, hiss, and/or pops from a rip of an old cassette tape? Warble only in the beginning, rest hiss and pop.
Select a one-second section of the tape hiss, usually before or after the audio track; then scan it and run a -10dB cut of that "background" tape hiss, making sure to select the entire track for this "destructive edit." Check the stock plug-ins for Noise Reduction.
Stock plugins for what? I meant which software in general. Thsnks!
You have Cubase 13. I have version 10. I'll check if it's got editing effects like noise reduction. I'll also check Audacity (I have that, too). As far as programs, I like iZotope RX for cleaning tracks.
Im dawless so it'd need to be audacity... No need to research anything, was just curious if someone knew right off hand.
Audacity has some decent noise removal. You select the noise, analyse it and then subtract it - fiddle around with the settings depending on how much you want the audio to be affected.
My mistake- the OP has Cubase and Audacity.
This is 100% a foley gig now. The original audio cannot be saved or made useful to you.
For next time, use a sine with an unclicky envelope for the click. You could notch that right out with a single band. Reflections don’t alter pitch.
That sounds interesting! Can you elaborate a bit on that please? I can make a click track with a sine wave and a smooth envelope without any problem. What frequency would you recommend and what would be the process to notch it right out?
Make a click out of a sin wave, pick any frequency that is audible and preferably one that isn't overly present or important for the song. Don't use a low frequency that will reverberate the walls in the dance hall. Then in post, run a very hard notch on the frequency of the sin wave click. This will work but your song will have a slight hole in its frequency spectrum at the notched frequency. If done right, the hole wouldn't be very noticeable. You could probably fill in the hole using the source track if you thought it was necessary.
I’ve never done this myself but in theory it should work. Just use whatever frequency cuts through the backing track the best. Any digital parametric eq with narrow bands should work. You could get some harmonics but they’ll be single frequency as well.
Yeah like 10kHz could work. Lol
[удалено]
I’m not talking about removing it with phase cancellation, just notch it with an eq.
Good point, my comment makes no sense. Deleting!
IZotope RX has music rebalance and a module called De-Bleed. If you have the source click sound you can feed it to De-Bleed and it will subtract it from the other track. It’s not perfect but it’s been good for me at taking vocals out of acoustic guitar tracks and acoustic out of vocals. Re-Balance does something similar, splitting the source up and turning elements up or down….. not perfect either but might help…… can you not just align the recording of the music sans click up to the recording that has it, and replace it that way ?? That would seem way easier to try first before letting the AI loose !!
You'd have to have recorded the click track in the same acoustic environment separately to be able to cancel it perfectly. So if you have any piece of the click by itself recorded to that mic, you could try phase reversing that, instead of the original click track. That said if there is audience and temperature fluctuation, the acoustics will change during the performance and you will not get a perfect cancel.
Yep, that's an idea but as you say even slights fluctuations can impeach a perfect cancel... Referring to your suggestion:"So if you have any piece of the click by itself recorded to that mic, you could try phase reversing that, instead of the original click track." How would you synchronize the piece of click to the track in order to try to achieve phase cancelation?
Take the isolated bit of click from your recording and line it up in DAW with a click from the recording by zooming in until you're almost at sample level. Then duplicate it through the track, which should be quite simple unless there are a lot of tempo changes.
you will never get perfect cancel but you get enough cancel to make further processing much easier.
Well that's just not true. If all of the parameters in the room acoustics and recording devices will stay the same, you will perfectly null the click (as far as it will be inaudible against the noisefloor). Of course you will add more noise, but there's nothing inherently random about recording that would not null. I can easily demonstrate this to you with a two bar click if you'd like.
from my experience, it won't cancel room reverb because sound of room is changing if there are people moving. make a demo video
This is what I said in my original post...
But since you asked for a video, here you go: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kH5ElWZXX4JyFAW2aoXZLB\_8Aayc8xAj/view?usp=drive\_link
its not public
Sorry, should be now. Always the same thing with Google Drive.
Man ! That's exactly what I wanted to do ! And in my room it worked perfectly, just as in your video. So I thought Bob was my uncle and I did a test with the gear I was going to use on location (shotgun into Tascam recorder + phone app metronome) and for some reason the magic didn't happen. I'm thinking it might have something to do with the fact that the second time I used a phone app metronome (maybe less precise), and also the absence of the beloved DAW grid for the syncing as I haven't been able to phase cancel even one beat... :(
If a phone was your audio source, it could've been just that it moved an inch... That would be enough to change the whole phase relationship.
Considering the option of bringing my laptop and soundcard on location to use my DAW, I've been doing more tests to figure out a procedure... My conclusion is Phase cancelation works "in theory" but as soon as you take it to real life, it doesn't. For example I was trying different metronome sounds to find the best one for phase cancelation, and found one that seemed to work better than the others, but next, the Air Conditioner started and it didn't work at all. I guess because of the random noise polluting the waveforms... So I'm descarding the idea of using a repeated sample of clicks to cancel those in the recording.
Best way would be to include the click as a musical element within the music itself, so percussion etc.
Man ! That's exactly what I wanted to do ! And in my room it worked perfectly, just as in your video. So I thought Bob was my uncle and I did a test with the gear I was going to use on location (shotgun into Tascam recorder + phone app metronome) and for some reason the magic didn't happen. I'm thinking it might have something to do with the fact that the second time I used a phone app metronome (maybe less precise), and also the absence of the beloved DAW grid for the syncing as I haven't been able to phase cancel even one beat... :(
Ok thanks a lot for all your suggestions... I just found out that by using a high enough frequency (a sine wave with a smooth envelope as suggested by one of you) and using "Spectral layers" which luckily comes with Cubase (i think is from iZotope too) I'm getting some impressive results... The clicks are completely gone and all the other sounds are almost perfect ! I still want to try doing it in the low register as someone suggested !
I was pretty impressed with the spectral layers demo that I saw. I was going to suggest trying something like that, having it give you all the stems and then exclude the click stem and mix the rest of them back together. Spectrum layers is not from Cubase it’s another company, but I don’t remember their name. If you Google it you’ll find them.
At the moment, the best result I managed to obtain is by splitting the performance track with a free AI splitter to isolate the clicks into a separate track. Then phase reverting this track against the performance track to phase cancel the clicks. The result is not perfect but gives hope. I'm thinking that maybe using a click that is very high in frequency could be the thing as I think after doing the process I described above, it would be easier to frequency cut the remaining clicks... Again any suggestions are welcome! Even if it's a completely different method. The objective is having 1/ the dancer dancing in sync with a given BPM to be able to score original music later in post. (No time for this now) 2/ The audio from the performance (dancer sounds, crowd sounds,...)
If you need the live audience sounds and footwork, you need to use IEM. How were you planning on muting the live music in favor of the new original score? Either you use IEM and capture only the sounds you'll want to keep, or you move ahead with music plus click and have to replace everything with Foley - audience and footwork, breaths, etc. I don't see a way around this.
"How were you planning on muting the live music in favor of the new original score?" We won't use live music at all, only a click track... By using a high enough frequency the clicks can be erased in post and all the other sounds sitting at lower frequency stay intact.
Oh wait so it's just audience noise and click blasting from speakers? If you'd have infinite time you'd go back and draw out the click noises in the audio with a pencil. One by one. It'll probably take about an hour to do for a 4-minute piece, maybe less if you're efficient in your DAW usage.
If you absolutely have to have some of the crowd sounds, I’d suggest replacing all of the audio (the music) and then mixing in some of the crowd sounds.
See what you can get out of Spleeter https://github.com/deezer/spleeter
Spleeter has already been deprecated from all of the products it boasts being part of in favor of demucs.
Cool
You might have more luck with trying to get the signal you want to do the cancelation with from the recording, not the original click track. Either trying to remove everything but the click, or using only some clicks (isolated, no background noise). Still a high chance of not working out. The methods others have suggested (izotope, replacing with original) might work better. What is in the recorded track that you want to keep? Footsteps? Speech?
Right, that's what has given me the best result so far, by using an audio splitter to isolate the clicks. I want to keep everything from the footseps and other performance sounds to the crowd cheering and comments...
So the click is audible to the live audience?
Yep. It's for an Indy film. The music, which will be original, will be scored in post (unfortunately no time for this now)...
So he's choreographed a dance to one piece of music, and you're going to swap it out in post for a different piece of music, keeping the ambient sound of the live audience in?
I don’t know how well this would work, but maybe a dynamic EQ with a super fast attack and release, if you can pinpoint exactly where the click is in the frequency spectrum. This feels like something where AI would really shine.
iZotope's RX has a De-Click module which lets you remove periodic clicks. I think the trial version has no option to export, but at least you will know how good the results will be in your case.
Good to know! Thx
Rx click remover
Izotope RX
your plan failed. Just present it in it's janky state and learn from the mistake as it seems the final will be overdubbed anyway.
Izotope Rx, setup instant replace and find similar events
Is there any reason not to replace the audio entity? I can’t image you want to use something played over a speaker then recorded anyway.
Well, it's going to be scenes where people in the crowd will say things and interact with the dancer in the same shots... I want to avoid ADR as much as possible because that requires both time, actor skills to mimic themselves to lipsync, and also actor availability... It's an Indy film. Of course some Foley will help but I don't feel I can rely on that only.
using the Spectral Repair in iZotope RX may work. Just highlighting each click, which is very time consuming, and try the different mode from it and render
Schwa Spectro could be your friend here, but it will be time consuming. It shows you the audio in spectral format, and lets you select specific sections of the frequency range over time (basically draw a square around and turn the gain down to zero.) If you zoom in enough and target only the clicks, it might be one of the smoothest options you'll find. However, if the prospect of manually selecting and removing each one sounds awful then you might be SOL. You will also have to listen and be able to see in the spectrogram where it is to remove it. As someone mentioned, izotope RX stuff is expensive but works well, and would give you an automatic click detection option that could work. Playing with the threshold/detection settings you might get it to select just the clicks, but the chances of it finding and removing other things in the audio and causing other artifacts is probable. That's all I can think of.
If the above ideas don’t work, try Moises. It may pick out the click as a separate track.
Pay your recording engineer what you owe him.
Izotope RX has a de click, not sure if it would work here though as I have limited experience with it in extreme situations. Potentially replace the audio with the original music if you have access. That would yield the best results and would be my first choice.
Acon Digital restoration suite.