Recurring Beep in Audio - How to Remove

[kylevenberg]

Hello,

I am a fairly new user to Audition and would really appreciate any help on this issue regarding the audio I recorded. For a recent wedding I recorded, once I imported my audio (captured through a microphone recorded to the GH4 audio jack) I hear this recurring audio beep that is constant through the audio track. Every 5 seconds or so, I hear this beep and it is very distracting.

Besides using the auto-heal tool on each individual audio beep, what are some recommended tools I can use to automatically remove these many beeps? It would take far too long to manually auto-heal each audio glitch during the ceremony and many other clips recorded. I also tried to learn the sound model on each of these audio glitches, but it cannot fully remove it.

Attached, you will find a picture of the waveform that I see in Audition.

Thank you in advance for any help,

Kyle

[ryclark]

I would be helpful if you could post a screen image of the Spectral Frequency Display for some of these 'bleeps' to help identify a possible cure. Even better a short clip in .wav format containing a few bleeps posted on somewhere like Dropbox or Google Drive for us to download and listen to might be even better. How did the original 'bleeps' get into the audio in the first place?

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

ryclark  wrote

How did the original 'bleeps' get into the audio in the first place?

That's a good question, and one I think I'd want to know the answer to pretty soon, if I was going to do any more of this! It looks like an alarm going off somewhere, and because they aren't all the same height, this looks like an acoustic pick-up of some sort, rather than any form of internal interference. But a clip in the original format (i.e. not an MP3 file) would indeed be helpful.

[kylevenberg]

Hello,

Similar to ryclark's reply, here is the link! Definitely, a very odd issue that I have never encountered before.

Link: Audio Glitch - Google Drive

Thanks,

Kyle

[SteveG_AudioMasters_ · Accepted solution]

Having looked primarily at the larger click (but also the smaller one, to a lesser degree) I can tell you unequivocally that something audible in the room caused those clicks and was picked up by your microphone. How do I know? Well, if you expand out the largest one it looks just like an impulse file you'd get if you fired a starting pistol or used a clapperboard in the space. The impulse is basically the response of the room you were in - the sound reflecting from the walls and dying away. So something in the location clicked. No I have no idea what it might be, as it's quite a clean click, but the nature of it is very clear!

Your only hope of removing these clicks is to do it manually - no amount of filtering will help, as the bandwidth of it covers most of the audible frequency range (you can see this in the Spectral view).

[ryclark]

Despite the room response the clicks sound fairly close to the mic, possibly some thing like someone holding a ball point pen and clicking the clip unconsciously. Sometimes speakers will tend to fiddle with a pen when talking. If so confiscate it!

These clicks are quite quick and easy to remove manually. Open the Spectral Frequency Display and choose the Spot Healing Brush Tool (shortcut B) and select a suitable zoom level for the display so that you see the clicks as a vertical colored red line. Now with a suitable Brush size selected click the tool at the top of the displayed click artefact and hold down the Shift key as you drag the mouse down to erase the click. The Shift hold option constrains the mouse to move in only the vertical direction so that you get an absolutely straight vertical erase. It is very quick once you get the hang of it and takes a fraction of the time of trying to explain how to do it.

[kylevenberg]

Hello,

Sorry for the late reply but here is the audio glitch on Google Drive. The odd thing is that the audio glitch only sounds on clips recorded outside in a somewhat specific location. It's really random and did not happen on clips recorded at other locations. Very strange! I have never encountered this issue before.

Link: Audio Glitch - Google Drive

Thanks,

Kyle