Anybody know a compressor trick that could take care of this?

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Whoopysnorp

Whoopysnorp

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I've got a bass track that has a lot of unpleasant clicks at the start of notes. That's just a problem this bass has at times, and the nature of the material compounds the problem. The song is just so damn hard to play that I have to be aggressive about it. So my question is, does anybody have any ideas about ways to use a compressor to minimize this sound? I tried cranking the attack time, assuming that if the attack was longer than the clicks they wouldn't be compressed, but no luck. Was I on the right track? I'm using the FAsoft compressor at a ratio of around 4:1.
 
Depending on how loud they are, you may be able to gate out the sound. Other than that, you're looking at either finding a way to minimize the sound while playing, or doing some serious .wav editing in Sound Forge or something similar.
 
The sound isn't bad enough to make it worth that much effort. I'll probably end up keeping it if I can't tame it with compression or EQ (they don't spike that high; in fact they spike lower than the pops which are part of the performance, so gating is out of the question). I had to edit the performance together from four different takes as it was.
 
combination of compression and EQ

I would think combination would work.

If the clicks are in the upper mids and the meat of the bass is in the lows and mid-low, you could:

compress the bass with a fast attack and medium fast release and sidechain the compressor with a copy of the bass that has the click (once you find the frequency range that the clicks live in). the sidechain'ed bass version would have the click pronounced so that the compressor kicks in for that part and reduces the audibility of the click while providing a smooth transition from the clicked sound of the bass to the meaty sound of the bass.

of course the real solution to your problem is to raise the bridge on your bass and/or switch to round-wound strings so you don't get the click sound
 
Whats clicking exactly? Strings on neck, or are the pickups a little too high. SOmetimes lowering the pickups just a tad will eliminate this problem. I have a big problem with the way I play bass and the way most pickups are raised. Look into fixing the problem at the source 1st.
 
If you're working in a DAW, bring the track up in the wave editor, zoom in on the bass track and high light JUST the clicks and compress just that transient. It might take you hours to get through it but if you take the time, you can take just the clicks out and leave the rest of it unscathed.
 
I'm not sure exactly what's clicking; I haven't taken the time to examine it. I know I used to have a lot more of a problem with it, but then I lowered the pickups quite a bit. That took care of most of it.

Anyway, I'm finding that now that there's a guitar on top of it, it's not so bad. Definitely not worth going into Sound Forge and editing every little imperfection.
 
Tube, I hear ya. I've done it though many times. I know, I know, it's much mo betta to record it without including the fuck ups but if you track a band and they're gone and say the bass player is a slaper and NOW you finally hear all that crap, it's either surgery or call him back in and hope you can re-train him to not do that shit. It's easier for me to do the former.
 
Wait a minute...

Wait a minute.

The compressor SHOULD be able to take this out IF it is just an attack dynamic.

When you said you "crank" the attack time, I surely hope you mean you are cranking it to be FASTER not slower.

Some compressors are just too slow to take the initial attack out.

If you want to get rid of these clicks, use about 5:1 and a very fast attack time, and carefully set your threshold as to not destroy the remainder of the dynamics. You may need to run this through 2 compressors in series in order to maintain the dynamics. Let each compressor do "some" of the work, it's usually smoother and more gentle with dynamics.

If it isn't so much an attack dynamic that is the problem, and it's more of just a high frequency click, run it through a high quality EQ and EQ out those high frequencies, which is where most of the energy in a click sound resides.

SH
 
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