What causes 'snapping' when cutting tracks?

[The Unavoidable]

I record a riff. I play it four times, and decide that the second take was the best. So I cut it out, and paste it as many times as the riff goes. But, as many of you might have experienced, it creates a sort of 'popping' noise at the start and end of every audio segment. This problem can obviously be avoided by playing as much as you can in one take, and with cymbal hits and a full blown mix these things usually just disappear in the mud.

Still what the hell is it, and how do I kill it and it's family? I'm working on a song now that is basically just a few clean guitars and vocals and I almost can't do any cutting at all, cause the fucking popping is always there.

HALP

 

[Morgan C]

Its cos you're going from zero volume to max volume instantaneously, so its like a transient, so it has a large attack. In Sonar and a few other programs I've used, on either side of the track, up the top left or top right if you move your mouse there there is a little triangle. Drag that into the track just maybe .2 secs long so that it fades into the audio. Do it on either side. Not sure what this is called, besides 'fading'. In Sonar you can choose between a slow fade, fast fade and linear fade too.

 

[egan.]

It basically has to do with the waveform starting far from a zero crossing. Do a short crossfade just before the restart of the riff and you should be fine.

 

[The Unavoidable]

Thanks, I'll look into it!

 

[K Odell]

yep a short crossfade will do the trick

 

[JeffTD]

Set your DAW up to autofade - I have cubase set up to automatically crossfade, fade in, and fade out by 5ms, and I never have clicking/popping problems.

 

[VH100R]

Set your DAW up to autofade - I have cubase set up to automatically crossfade, fade in, and fade out by 5ms, and I never have clicking/popping problems.

+1

 

[Rupturemetal]

Crossfade is your friend

 

[Aaron Smith]

Egan is right on... To further elaborate, when a sound wave is cut at a point that doesn't start at zero, your speakers are basically being told to immediately be at a different place than standing still (pushed out or pulled in, depending on the direction of the waveform), and this of course it physically impossible, so you hear a pop or click as your speakers try to instantaneously move.

 

[paladin shredder]

this should help demonstrate why you hear those pops in audio.

 

[Ermz]

Just set your DAW to autofade anywhere between 2 and 5ms. Also helps to 'drop in' or do edits at logical points, rather than mid-riff or mid-note.

 

[Jarkko Mattheiszen]

Just set your DAW to autofade anywhere between 2 and 5ms. Also helps to 'drop in' or do edits at logical points, rather than mid-riff or mid-note.

+1

I remember when I was 15 or 16 or so and got to spend two weeks at Astia studio. When Kippo (the engineer) let me play around with a project showing me stuff, I remember how baffled I was when he made me do almost non-existent fades on edits before I dared to ask him why I was doing that

 

[K Odell]

Just set your DAW to autofade anywhere between 2 and 5ms. Also helps to 'drop in' or do edits at logical points, rather than mid-riff or mid-note.

Is this possible in Logic if so could someone walk my dumbass through it haha bc that would be very awesome

 

[LSD-Studio]

I'm doing all my fades and crossfades manually looking at he waveform of the DI track...I'm a controlfreak

 

[pifos_2]

I'm doing all my fades and crossfades manually looking at he waveform of the DI track...I'm a controlfreak

I think it is better manually too for control purposes.

Also you never play totally perfectly "on beat", you are always a little bit before or a little bit after the beginning of a measure or a beat, depending on your "internal groove". So typical crossfade can sometimes "eat" the first impact of a riff on the first beat and you have to move it.

 

[Ermz]

For sure, you should always adjust and listen to each one individually. However, having the DAW autofade those sections at 2ms saves you having to repeat 1 or 2 keystrokes every time.

 

[El_Gato]

Same here. I do it manually. In the case I do it automatically always listening to the result so there are no unexpected pops

 

[greyskull]

manually here too... dont trust automatic thingys

 

[Ronixis]

I hope this isn't off-topic, but does the same principal work on punching in guitar tracks too? I'm not that into copy-paste methods, but when I record guitars in small sections, I get awful noise between the takes.

Until now, I have recorded different sections on different tracks, and later made a mixdown off them. What would be the best sounding and most efficient way to do this? Thanks!

 

[agentmetal]

I don't really get it... What do you mean by "between the takes" ?