Cracking noise between Loops

[jean-marc desvals]

Bonjour tout le monde,
Here is a small problem we can't solve on our own

We use Mixcraft pro studio 6, W8 ie5 Samsung computer 4Go DDR3 HD1To
We record loops, using a Yamaha usb mixtable MG 166c + Yamaha Asio driver
We also tryied to use a Fasttrack C600 with ASIO Driver = same issue

Here is the point :
we record a loop (guitar or bass)
we snap it to measure
we copy and past this loop any time we need

and as the result we get this small and "make us crazy we can eat our hands" NOISE
between those loops
we tryied the "remove space between loops", the noise stay
we can remove it manually but we would prefet not to have it....

Is it an USB issue ?
Does it may come from the metronome ? (pb with latency and MC record it a little??)

Sample file below
Any ideas ?
Jean-Marc
http://www.reverbnation.com/bathmats

[Tiasdad]

I hear your problem and have suffered it myself a few times. I find that overlapping the clips by as little as 1/64th of a beat, by dragging one end out to keep the timing makes a quick and easy difference. For integrity though, you really need to open it in a wave editor and remove the offending artifact.

[staaf]

Hi
I opened Your MP3 file (converted to analog audio) and from what I could see (picture) regarding the last "pop" in the fainting guitarr, it is a disjunctional merging! I would guess that this aries from that this point is two parts of an audio file whose nose and tail does not fit with each other. You can see that the right part is a bit positive but that the left part is a bit negative/close to zero. This junction will make a "POP"!

(Here comes some home-made engineering talk in english which is not my mother tounge...)
A simple rule is to make an beginning and an ending in a ZERO CROSS point.

So I say that You should edit the loop so that
1) They end and begin i ZERO CROSSINGS
2) They start with a positive going amplitude and end comming from a negaitive amplitude
This editing/trimming of Your loops may not be possible within MX as I thing it cant zoom in enough (but please try!). I use Cool Edit. A very old PC-program. Thats is were the picture comes from. (I had to amplify/normalize it very much before I could see something in CoolPro)
This is my guess...

Regards,

[jean-marc desvals]

Thanks for the reply Guys

i like the zero crossing idea even if i still don't understand
why Mixcraft allow this.

btw i have to add, that this "pop" sound can be hear also
when we make only one loop, mainly at the end but also
at the beginning, so did the zero crossing hypothesis work
this way ?

what is very frustrating is how aleatory is this phenomena.

[jean-marc desvals]

Problem fixed with an SSD HD....

[jean-marc desvals]

wrong hope, the ssd drive did not save us....

we tryied on 2 different laptop
unplugged all usb devices
unplugged alimentation
desengaged metronome
i think we all try
same issue, cracking "pop" sound at the END of any LOOPS

it looks like we will have to choose the superposition trick.

What is surprising is that nobody seems to report this issue ?

[Mark Bliss]

Its not really an issue so much as its the way audio editing works.

As generally described in Staafs fine explanation, to get quiet audio edit points is tricky, Looping tends to aggravate this, and very precise editing really requires a dedicated or built in editing program. Some DAW's have these features, but it is in addition to, not necessarily included with basic DAW functions. At least from what I have seen. I have heard that the modern versions of the free program Audacity even has some very good tools that can help. Hopefully future versions of Mixcraft will also have better editing tools.

In addition to the tips given, you can sometimes get more satisfactory results with carefully placed level fades to clean up loop or clip tails, and you can often carefully select edit locations so they "hide" behind other sounds, like a drum hit or something.

There are also programs more dedicated to loop functions and "acidizing" that offer advanced and helpful tools for this.

Mixcraft is a very broad and feature packed program, especially at its price point. But it was never intended to do everything for everyone. There are simply too many various "needs" for that to be possible.

[jean-marc desvals]

Thanks Mark, really appreciate your reply
it's good to know we are not mad or crazy

Mixcraft is our best software (friendly & cheap) at the moment, i did meant anything else.

[bbdrmz]

This isn't a problem with Mixcraft. You control the zero cross points. Usually these bad spots, pops or clicks, come from a poorly cut clip. In other words you cut the wave in half, or chopped it's head off. When you cut make sure to cut in a break in the waveform. The above mentioned fix is called a cross fade. It basically fades out of one take and into another. This sometimes works, not always. So, it's best to pay extra attention when cutting clips.

[batssa]

click noise.png (13.17 KiB) Viewed 8697 times

Thats how I get rid of it, couldnt find another way :/

[AHornsby]

Hello.

Also... the waveform seemed a little puny to me so perhaps increasing the input gain wouldn't be a bad idea either. -h

[NewbeeNo99]

I sometimes have this issue as well.

I use to zoom in on the loopclip and then make a volum edit point at the end of the loop and fade the volume down to zero on (the volume level on the clip itself).

It's usually not noticable at all. But I'm not sure if its a good way to do it.