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NSargert
NSargert
Participant
May 18, 2023
Question

Attempting to create loop-able SFX audio, except there's a blip issue.

  • May 18, 2023
  • 1 reply
  • 382 views

Right off the bat, truthfully I am no audio savvy individual. So forgive me if I sound uninformed.

As the title says, I'm attempting to loop a 1-2 second track of a carhorn. I'm doing so by cutting and pasting out a chunk of a record car horn, and then cutting said clip right in the middle. I then move the right half of the clip in front of the left half, and cross disolve them.

My issue really remains with the new beggining and end of the two merged clippings. Logically speaking cutting something in half and sewing the ends together makes it loopable, no? Atleast I thought so, until I replayed the entire clip on a loop. There's this little blip that plays when the audio loops back to the beggining - I attempted to fade the new beggining and ends of the audio, but obviously that just makes it even more unloopable - though does get rid of the blip.

Does anyone have any idea what I'm doing wrong? Thanks!

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1 reply

SteveG_AudioMasters_
Community Expert
SteveG_AudioMasters_Community Expert
Community Expert
May 18, 2023

Seems to me like rather a strange way to create a loop...

You put your file selection into Multitrack view as a clip, highlight it, and go to the Properties box where the information about it is displayed. There you put a check in the Loop box, whereupon the clip itself will aquire a 'loop' symbol in the bottom left corner. Now you will find that if you drag the RH edge of the clip along the timeline, another copy of it will start, and you can drag this as far as you want. One thing you might need to do in order to get rid of your clicks (which are caused by non-zero crossings at the clip junctions) is, when you create the clip, to set the timeline snapping to 'snap to zero crossings'. If you trim the clip at the points that the cursor stops, you'll notice that the waveform at that point passes through zero. If you do this for both ends of your clip, it will loop without clicking, because you've got rid of the discontinuity.

 

If at first you don't succeed, then persevere - it's not that easy getting good looping samples to start with, but with a bit of practice and understanding what the issues are, you'll eventually do fine!

NSargert
NSargertAuthor
Participant
May 18, 2023

I appreciate your response, and it's actually furthered me a bit into the solution. The loop checkbox isn't usable for this case, as I need the track to stay within a 1-2 second parameter. I'm required to stay within this parameter as this SFX is for a video game, and the smaller the track size the less memory is used on the device. 
The 'snap to zero' crossings I believe is exactly what I am looking for, to rid of the discontinuty as you said, but my issue now lies on the fact that I cannot snap to zero crossings on a multitrack file? I could perform this on a singular audio file, but then at that point I have no idea how to cross disolve the two ends back together.

I appreciate your response, and I hope your day's doin' good so far by the way!

SteveG_AudioMasters_
Community Expert
SteveG_AudioMasters_Community Expert
Community Expert
May 18, 2023

You can't adjust zero crossings in Multitrack, because nothing in that view is 'real' - it's just a file player, albeit rather a posh one - and that's why the option is greyed out. Also, it's notable that you can make very short loops in Multitrack if you want to...

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