Cutting Stereo Audio Without Resulting Click Sound?

I have a stereo audio clip where I wish to cut out a small portion of the clip and discard it.

The stereo track is slightly different in terms of the two wave shapes and are not quite in synchronization with each other. So the wave zero crossing points don't (quite) line up with respect to each other (at least for the section I wish to cut out or delete).

To avoid audio clicking as far as possible for the resulting audio clip, I understand that the waves should be cut at the wave zero crossing points. But as the waves are slightly out of synchronization, and the wave zero points do not correspond to each other, it appears to be impossible to select both tracks simultaneously for cutting at the zero crossing points.

So, how do I cut out the audio sections for both the stereo audio tracks to avoid the resulting clicking sound at the audio clip cut points?

Maybe edit each of the stereo tracks separately at their wave zero crossing points and combine the resulting edited tracks? If so, how?

If not at zero points, select a region and do a cross-fade.


Scott

Alternatively to Scott proposal you may wish to manually (or some form of automatic tool) interpolate between cut points - some tools allow automatic interpolation - they are named variously - declick, heal etc.

Originally Posted by Cornucopia

If not at zero points, select a region and do a cross-fade.


Scott

Thanks for the comment.

Unless I'm misinterpreting this, I don't really want any fading (in or out) of the tracks.

Basically I want the entire audio clip to remain at approximately the same level for both of the stereo tracks. I just want to remove a bit of the audio from the clip which has a distracting sound which appears briefly.

Originally Posted by pandy

Alternatively to Scott proposal you may wish to manually (or some form of automatic tool) interpolate between cut points - some tools allow automatic interpolation - they are named variously - declick, heal etc.

Thanks for the comment.

After checking a handful of audio editors, so far, I haven't found any function that effectively removes any clicking sounds due to editing cuts. Although I may have missed the appropriate function(s)?

I've checked -

Audacity,
Acoustica,
Goldwave,
WavePad,
Adobe Audition,
ocenaudio,
AVS Audio Editor,
Wavosaur.

What about the declick function? Audacity has this under effects/noise removal and repair

Originally Posted by davexnet

What about the declick function? Audacity has this under effects/noise removal and repair

Thanks for the suggestion!

I had a quick attempt using Audacity declick, but it seemed to me to have relatively little impact on removing the "cluck" (yes, cluck) sound. Not really a click sound as such but more of a dull sound more like a "cluck".


I've attached a sample stereo wav where the task is to remove the person saying "sir" and join the remaining two parts of the wave so that there is no distortion and no clicking or clucking sound where the two clip parts are joined.

Originally Posted by meeshu

After checking a handful of audio editors, so far, I haven't found any function that effectively removes any clicking sounds due to editing cuts. Although I may have missed the appropriate function(s)?
Adobe Audition,

Ok, as i use ancient Audition 3.0 then it will be provided as reference.
Let say you have your splice point and in this particular place waveform are not continues but disrupted and as such nasty click occurs, zoom to this area, select small group of samples in particular channel and use on selection 'Auto Heal' located in Favorites tab - if you check (Edit Favorites) how 'Auto Heal' is made then 'Restoration\Click/Pop Eliminator (process)' is used.
Key to fix abruption is to limit Click/Pop eliminator to few tens of samples i.e. really narrow area around splice/cut point - you need to smooth area between signal peaks. You are operating in high zoom not on whole clip. This is precision surgery.
Almost every audio editor should allow for such thing.
Audacity for example offers this:
https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/tutorial_click_and_pop_removal_techniques.html#Rep...short_sections

The way to do this seamlessly is cutting out and replacing with roomtone (aka existing background ambience) of equivalent level, so you never have a gap, and the average non-speaking level doesn't change, and then use micro-crossfades between segments (~1sec or less, maybe even msecs). Being a crossfade (aka segue or some write "segway"), the overall level remains consistent.


Scott

Thanks for the comments.

As of this reply, I am still having some difficulty in getting a 'clean' edit without any kind of distortion at the cut points.

Originally Posted by meeshu

Thanks for the comments.

As of this reply, I am still having some difficulty in getting a 'clean' edit without any kind of distortion at the cut points.

Perhaps you should post a before and after WAV.
Are you really just snipping odd words out here and there?

Originally Posted by meeshu

Thanks for the comments.

As of this reply, I am still having some difficulty in getting a 'clean' edit without any kind of distortion at the cut points.

What kind of distortions - you can't hide fact that someone speak for example dra|gon but you splicing it with word h|at and as effect you have dra|at . this is obvious so you need select splice point wisely.

It can be done, though.

As an example, continuing from what pandy said, you could cut it like h|at or ha|t or h|a|t, and then dr|agon or dra|gon or drag|on or dr|a|gon etc, so the permutations can get quite large and its possible to use an a from a completely different section if it suits the purpose and matches the elements better to make the transition smoother.


Scott

Thank you.

I'm just removing one spoken word from the audio clip which is mostly background sound effect.

I'm trying to match up the levels of the two channels (stereo) from the start cut to the finish cut when editing out the spoken word ("sir", for this sample clip). I believe the levels are very closely matched when selecting the cut points. But despite this, there is still a definite (slight) unwanted sound (a sort of ffftt sound) from the edited audio clip where the cuts were made.

And that's where the crossfades especially help out.


Scott

That ffttt sound is on the trailiing edge of the word, so you have to extend the selection a little to the right.
Once that word is deleted and the transition sounds OK except for a level drop, it's about 5 or 6 steps to set up
crossfade track, and mix and render to a new track.
I did it Audacity. I learned the bare minimum about manipulating selections to get this done -
it's OK once you get it working and you'll learn some basic techniques

Noted, thanks!