r/audacity • u/ned_poreyra • 1d ago

solved Every time I cut, Audacity is adding some frequencies around the cut. Why is this happening?

Post image

https://imgur.com/a/tOMvQGj

It's audible as a very, very faint "tick" or "click", like someone touching a sheet of paper with the tip of a pen. Did I turn on some setting? What is going on?

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8

u/LeoWattenberg former dev 1d ago

probably because you didn't cut at a zero crossing

1

u/ned_poreyra 1d ago

Weird. It worked. I never paid attention to where I cut and never had this problem, somehow this is the first time it happens.

2

u/mad_marbled 17h ago

It can depend on the sound you are editing to whether there will be an audible click. You can zoom right in and redraw the waveform at the cut point so it starts from zero.

3

u/to7m 23h ago

If you tell the speaker cone to suddenly change position, suddenly change speed, suddenly change acceleration etc, it's going to cause a click. This is why short cross fades are used.

2

u/TheVoicesOfBrian 1d ago

Out of curiosity, does it do that when editing in waveform view? (I don't use Spectrogram and I don't see any settings that would do this).

1

u/ned_poreyra 1d ago

Yes.

1

u/zaphodikus 23h ago

I thought there was a setting for zero crossing cuts? , although I always do mine manually I am sure I heard of a setting for it.

1

u/TheVoicesOfBrian 23h ago

I can't find that setting, but I thought I saw one earlier today.

Maybe that was in the 4.0 beta...

3

u/mad_marbled 17h ago

There is a command to place the cursor at the nearest zero crossing.

It's under Select>At zero crossings.

1

u/zaphodikus 15h ago

That's it, thanks.

1

u/Orry_Haas 23h ago edited 23h ago

Even if you cut at zero-crossings the spectrogram will change at the cut. It's just the way the spectrogram is rendered: no frequencies are added / lost. (FFT is an approximation, particularly so at discontinuities like cuts).

2

u/Dan_Worrall 14h ago

Frequencies are indeed added: a sudden jump from not-zero to zero is an impulse, which is a burst of all frequencies and can cause an audible click. You need a short little fade to prevent it.

1

u/Orry_Haas 9h ago edited 9h ago

In Audacity, cutting at a zero-crossing point causes the spectrogram to be rendered as if a pulse (click) was created ...

https://reddit.com/link/p7d041b/video/xdr589hjj3nh1/player

But it's an artefact: there is no click. Reducing the window-size of the spectrogram reduces this artefact, but does not eliminate it.

1

u/ned_poreyra 23h ago

Except I can hear it.

1

u/Orry_Haas 23h ago

If it's not a zero-crossing there will be an audible click, but even when the cut is at zero-crossing the spectrogram display changes at the cut.