Remove clicks, pops and impacts from an audio recording
When to use De-click or spectral attenuation, and how to preserve speech.
Spectral attenuation
Attenuate an unwanted sound in a selected time-frequency region.
When should you choose this tool?
A whistle may form a narrow horizontal band; an impact can span many frequencies at once. Spectral selection lets you treat the event locally without lowering the rest of the recording.
How it changes audio
It reduces energy inside the selected time-frequency region while retaining original phase. It neither copies nor generates surrounding audio to fill the region. Selection and attenuation together determine what changes.
What do the parameters control?
- Selection mode
- Time, rectangular and brush selections cover different shapes. A spectral operation needs a frequency region as well as a time interval.
- Brush size; Edge softness
- Brush size shapes the selection; softness shapes its transition into untouched frequencies. A soft edge can still affect nearby speech components.
- Reduction; FFT
- Reduction sets attenuation inside the region. FFT resolution trades time precision against frequency precision. A larger window is not always preferable for short events.
Try a short passage
- Listen first, then zoom into the event in the spectrogram. Identify its onset and occupied frequencies.
- Draw a narrow selection and start Preview with gentle attenuation. Speech in the same region may also be affected.
- Compare Input, Result and Residual. Apply only when surrounding speech is preserved acceptably.
What to listen for
The unwanted event should recede without punching a hole in the sentence. Narrow the selection or reduce attenuation if speech disappears.
Limits of the method
Speech and noise occupying the same region may be attenuated together. This is attenuation, not inpainting; a cleaner picture does not replace listening.
Preview covers a short passage. After applying, review the full treated section; you can undo the step from history.