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After dispensing with a couple of other easy squeaks, I arrived at a thornier problem. This noise was intertwined with the audio, making a click sound. It almost sounded like a tuning peg shifted slightly, but thankfully the guitar didn't go out of tune. Looking at the Frequency Space interface, I could see where the noise was, but deleting it wasn't going to be easy. There were two main suspects, odd shapes that didn't conform to the rest of the audio, at 7000kHz and 4500kHz. I switched to the Lasso tool to trace their borders and delete them. That helped somewhat, but there was a lower frequency component to the click. Using the Vertical Zoom tool, I increased the frequency scale to see the lower frequencies in more detail. Sure enough, there were three more strange shapes going down below 2k. I zoomed in further both horizontally and vertically, then carefully outlined them and deleted them.
The click got quieter -- but it was still there, and it was big! A broken line that hadn't attracted my attention at first extended from 12k down to below 1k. I was forced to whittle away at it to make sure I wasn't deleting bits of the guitar, hitting play after every edit to be sure. In the end I was left with a long boot-shaped hole. I had defeated the click.
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| Before and after defeating the wily click. Scale on right shows frequencies in Hz. |
This is the type of situation where Frequency Space Editing is invaluable. It was impossible to get to this noise, and several others later in the track, any other way. The techniques are the same if you're trying to remove honking horns from a video production or barking dogs from a radio field recording. You find the sounds by their frequencies and edit them out. Adobe Audition's interface for this task is very user-friendly, and once you get the hang of Frequency Space Editing, it goes quickly -- unless you are faced with a monster noise that spans most of the frequency range like I was. But even so, Audition proved up to the challenge and I didn't have to re-record a great track.
After editing the track into a pristine condition, the next thing I did was haul the offending guitar off to a guitar tech for a thorough setup, including a neck adjustment and a fret job. Next time I use Audition's Frequency Space Editing, I'm hoping the mission will be much easier -- removing a cough perhaps!
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