How To Get Rid Of Clicks?

I’m having some problems with clicks, sometimes with samples it’s just that they don’t start 100% silent which is easy enough to fix… But often I have clicks coming from VSTi’s or effects getting switched on or off which is pretty annoying. Sometimes fx can’t just get switched on when it’s silent.

I don’t really feel like render it all to disk and cleaning it up, is there any tips or tricks to get around clicks? Is it just me that is having these problems?

Cheers!

If it’s a delay based effect, you need to let it decay naturally.
Instead of turning them off, put them on a send channel and quickly fade the send amount to zero.

Thanks, hadn’t thought of that.

If you can turn the attack up slightly in the VST you shouldn’t hear the clicks. I’ve had to do that a few times to get around VST note-on clicks (usually with sine waves).

Can you actually give some examples of plugins which exhibit the problem you’re talking about? Then we can do some tests of our own and see if we experience the same thing.

Edit: It would also be cool if you could perhaps share a simple example song/pattern which demonstrates it, just in case it’s not very obvious during normal usage.

Also check if you’re automating ‘width’, this changes the phase and can also introduce clicks in the audio. What I’ve sometimes have done to circumvent clicks is throwing a denoising effect on the channel and automating the threshold.

Copy link in browser for list of denoisers:

http://www.kvraudio.com/get.php?mode=results&st=adv&soft[]=e&type[]=69&f[]=0&f[]=au&f[]=dx&f[]=ladspa&f[]=rtas&f[]=vst&linux=1&osx=1&win=1&free=1&com=1&un=1&sf=0&receptor=&de=0&sort=3&rpp=100  

@ frux - I tried adding a lengthier attack, I actually thought in this recent case that sounded very likely to remove the clicks as it’s a very small attack, but no luck.

@ Jonas - I’m going to try denoising the channel, I assume by automating the threshold you mean the denoiser’s frequence threshold to follow the instrument’s… erm… pitch? I’m not extremely technically savvy as that question probably shows…

@ dblue - If my next efforts fails I’ll throw something together, right now I couldn’t say it’s a specific VSTi I’m struggling most with. Switching Glitch on for instance gives me clicks all the time, but I should maybe try having Glitch on a send channel and just switch the send on and off instead… or just automate the gain on the send. Would work.

Is that how you guys would use Glitch, for instance? I have a bass line that has a note on every line and that always throws up a click. I’ll try doing the above soon. [edit] Heh - forgot you wrote the thing when I replied… guess you’d know. :)

Thanks for all help!

Well, I can say that switching Glitch on and off directly like that may not be the best approach here. I designed the plugin to receive a constant stream of audio from the host, which lets me analyse the samples and calculate various things, including a de-click algorithm to help smooth out the transitions between effect changes. When you turn the plugin off like that, you’re preventing it from receiving any audio and updating itself, and so when you turn it back on later there may be weird gaps or pops in the output due to the chunk of missing sample data. Instead of turning off the plugin completely, it may be better to automate the master output mix instead, so that you’re switching between 0% wet mix and 100% wet mix.

I can’t speak for any other VST plugins, but I suspect there might be others that behave in the same way, where they might not handle the on/off transition very gracefully.

Thanks for clearing that up, at least I know that part isn’t just me. I heard of some people recording the whole thing to disk (not necessarily when using glitch) and then fading wavs in and out… this approach sounds much more flexible. :D

Bad vst fx, vsti or for instance an usb midicontroller can also create clicks, just start making a song and find out which one doesn’t like renoise, and delete it.

Renoise disables effects automatically when they’re not used for a while to save CPU time. Some effects don’t like this. Click the little [?] Button of the VST in the Track DSPs and disable “Auto-suspend when silent”, that might help.

Another thing that causes clicks:
Applying bpm changes through pattern effects command while using the internal delay effect that is “Synced” to the amount of lines
To resolve that, simply keep your delay amount fixed to a certain amount of msecs or temporary turn it off before changing the bpm/lpb.

I think your work-flow is simply not good… switching on/off effects is not a good way of working… it s like switching off your mixer to make a cut in your dj mix… use the dry/wet or fx amount parameter to enable or disable the effect… think that a vst is like a hardware machine, it clicks when switched on/off.

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