| Lee Dragon's |
De-Clicker Buzz Machine
version 1.0
apo - that was supposed to be the GUI !! :)
Introduction:
Clicks are one of the most annoying aspects of audio engineering. while calibrating the EQ / compressors and the other gear , trying to get that "pro" sound, it sometimes frustrates to be un able to remove those clicks that occur either because of bad recording or because of gear problems with the machines them selves. if your ear is good enough , you can notice that in professional recordings there are almost no clicks at all ! the sound is just smooth all the way to the mix. it is obvious that it has to do with the gear ... because after all professional recording studios have gear worth of thousands of dollars made with golden wiring sometimes, but besides that declicking is very useful for fixing gear problems and it is also used mostly in bad or old recordings that need to "get better" .... check out all the new releases in stores of OLD vinyls from the 60s or 50s ... during the engineering of those there is alot of use in declickers. so ... after we got the point ... what are those clicks ?!?! well .. a click or "pop" in audio refers to a quick or unexpected change in amplitude from one end to another , against the flow of the wave or such. the next figure shows an audio click :
figure 1 - an audio click
Now that we know what a click is that brings us to the first 2 parameters that we need to know in our declicker : Click Volume and Fine Volume. With these 2 you set the "Click Detector" to detect clicks (fast changes in amplitude) that are in this volume - which means that any Click detected that is above this volume will "kick" in the declicker to work. Click Volume is a large scale volume set while Fine Volume is used to set a very precise volume ... so its covers a small scale. the next figure shows what the Click Volume is : PAY ATTENTION that the volume of the click on the bottom scale is actually smaller than the volume of the click on the top scale so in order to fix them both the click volume needs to be set according to the smaller click of the two!!
figure 2 - click volume parameter
this now bring us to the way the declicker actually works and how does it actually fix such clicks. theory: every waveform has a kinda logical algorithm behind it (except for white noise). a click is something that goes AGAINST the waveform algorithm .. means an unexpected change in the algorithm. the only way we can fix those clicks in audio waveforms is if we knew what is the algorithm behind the waveform so we can fix the "holes" in the waveform that the click actually created by using the waveform algorithm. but to BE REAL ... such kinda thing is impossible to be done in real time and in un real time it takes ages to figure out the algorithm behind the waveform! we do need to "fill in" the holes that the click created by taking the waveform before the click and the waveform after the click and try to connect between them in the shape of the incoming signal ... thats exactly the way our declicker works ... the next figure shows that clearly:
figure 3 - "soften" parameter's influence
As you can see , the RED and BLUE lines are the Declicker's "fixed" signal according to the third parameter Soften - which as you can see sets the knee of the continuation of the input signal's shape ... the more soften you put ... the more it "softens" the declicker's correction algorithm :> and now to the next 3 parameters : Hit Back Hard , Hit Back Fine and Gain. according to our theory , when the declicker starts to work it fixes the missing "holes" of the click according to the before and after signal shapes and in a release according to Soften. At some point , the "fixed" signal will collide with the original signal as you can see in the following figure:
figure 4 - "hit back" volume parameter's influence
I Named this collision of the "fixed" signal with the original signal "Hit Back" and i think it is also very obvious why :> Any how as you can see the Hit Back Volume is actually the distance in amplitude between the "fixed" signal (in BLUE) and the original signal ... so whenever the declicker detects that this distance "breaks" .. it means for it that the declicking state it was in is now finished and the declicker can be released from operation. the less Hit Back volume you set ... the more precise Declicking you get ! but dont set the Hit Back volume to 0 all the time because as i just said it affects the releasing time of the declicker from its work ... setting the Hit Back volume to 0 on Big Gain signals will cause the declicker to stay in declicking mode until the volume level of the fixed signal and the original signals are equal (which might never happend causing your declicker to declick for ever .... ) Just use your imagination and audio engineering skills :)) to adjust all the 5 parameters of the Declicker , and then you can also use Gain parameter to raise the gain of the output signal! Mode parameter switches the output mode of the declicker from NORMAL to CLICKS. NORMAL means normal declicker output , CLICKS means output only the detected clicks! :>
Well i hope i covered the machine's functionality entirely ... if you still have some questions you are always welcome to leave me a feed back at redwinestudio@yahoo.com (my Band's email) with subject "Declicker" i'll be happy to answer all of you since this is actually my first buzz machine !! :>>>>>
GREETINGS: To every one who helped me in making this machine possible :
Hal Dreamer - this one goes for you man ... thanks to you i actually created this! :> Cyanphase and Apo - thanks for helping me out with answering my annoying questions :>>
and special thanks to OSKARI for making BUZZ - the best music application , and answering some questions for me too
K E E P O N B U Z Z I N '