Annoying click-sound in music loops.
I am trying to make a short sound-loop seem seamless. That however is proving to be impossible. As you can see in the example file, there is a clicking-sound that shows up at the end of every loop. Granted the loop ends abruptly, yet that's the only way to make a constant sound. Is there a workaround to this problem?
Example file:
http://rapidshare.com/files/435115061/clicksound.mfa
Re: Annoying click-sound in music loops.
Hey keokeo,
sometimes this is related to where the Sample has been cuted. You have to cut your Sample at the Zero-Crossing-Line otherwise you always get a clicksound when the Wavefile loops.
You can easily cut your Samples with any Wave-Editor of your Choise. Just make sure you zoom into the waveform enough to see the "Stair-Step"-looking Waveform. Cut the Waveform exactly where it crosses the "Mid-Line" called Zero-Crossing-Line. This must be done at the Beginn of the Sample and at the End. Then you can loop the Wave without any clicks.
Hopefully you understand what i mean. My English is not so good, i' from Switzerland.
Greetz from Jahkri
Re: Annoying click-sound in music loops.
Jahkri I am surprised to find your suggestion actually works! I really didn't think it would, but I was wrong. The loop is now almost perfect, only a very tiny amount of clicking remains which is about 99% less audible than it was before (I am working on eliminating that as well). Thank you very much.
Re: Annoying click-sound in music loops.
Hey Keokeo,
Glad i could help.
Perhaps you could get rid of this last "tiny clicking" by setting the "Play and Loop"-Wavefile at the End of the Event-List so there are no other events to be processed before the Loop is actualy done inside MMF. But i' m realy not sure if this realy has to do with the event-handling inside MMF.
Are you using the MMF-Event-Editor-Built-In-Function to play the Music-Files or are you using an Extension? How long is your Wavefile (1 Loop)?
Hope this helps
Greets from Switzerland
jahkri
Re: Annoying click-sound in music loops.
Jahkri,
It can't be the order of the events. In the second file I post here you will see I only have 1 event.
I am using the MMF-Event-Editor-Built-In-Function to play the file. It is about 0.7 seconds long (0.774 to be precise!). Unfortunately I still haven't found a way to entirely remove the remaining clicking sound. I have cut my sample in a daw as precisely as possible(the program automatically picked the zero-crossing lines and I cleaned up the surroundings).
http://rapidshare.com/files/435176341/clicksound2.mfa
Re: Annoying click-sound in music loops.
Hmm... your soundfile is very short. You could try to make it longer (copy the sample a few times in the Audio-Editor. You should try about 3 to 10 copys, makes the whole loop about 2 - 7 seconds in duration (depending on how often you copied the sample). Also be carefull to copy/paste the loops at the proper position (Zero-Crossing). Of course this Method does not work when you need to have just one sample-loop.
I' ve encountered these "hickups" in Audio to when looping a realy short sample (but i' m not sure if it was in MMF or in another App).
Anyway, i will try your example and see what can be done...
I will reply as soon as i investigated into your .mfa-File.
Greets from Switzerland
jahkri
Re: Annoying click-sound in music loops.
Hey Jahkri, I enlarged the loop and it seemed even smoother. Thank you for all your input it has been invalueable.
Re: Annoying click-sound in music loops.
Quote:
Originally Posted by keokeo
Hey Jahkri, I enlarged the loop and it seemed even smoother. Thank you for all your input it has been invalueable.
Invaluable means "very valuable" by the way. Just clarifying that, seems like that could be easily misinterpreted if you weren't a native English speaker. :grin:
Re: Annoying click-sound in music loops.
Yeah, I was once talking to a person (non-native speaker) who kept saying things were 'worthless' rather than 'invaluable' because she assumed they were synonymous xD
Back on topic, the clicking sound is most likely a product of being an MP3. It's really a terrible format. MP3s almost always have random clicks and pops throughout the sound. It's better, if you can, to get sounds in a different format, and do the work to them there. Sometimes it's unavoidable though.
As a general rule, make sure you do the fewest conversions possible.
Re: Annoying click-sound in music loops.
Actually I am using wav. I've looked into it and Jahkri's theory is actually the most plausible one. On a different note I think it's funny how all three people who replied to this thread have a name that starts with Ja-
Re: Annoying click-sound in music loops.
:) yes... the Ja-Thread... lol
Thanks Jaffob for the help. The funny Thing is that i understand the english native language much better than i speak (write) it. But thanks again. This Forum is so great that even non native-english-speakers are very well supported and encouraged to learn and also ask questions if necessary.
Jacob, i don' t want to offend you, but to me it seems that it is not a problem with MP3. I never had any difficulties to play and work with MP3s. Ofcourse, if the File is badly converted, then it could sound bad, but normaly it just degrades some of the Frequency-Content that isn' t very important to human ears. And if you get crackles and clicks in an MP3, then something is wrong with the MP3-File or the Player you use to play them or if you encode them yourself, then perhaps your codec is not doing the conversion right.
Any decent (even Freeware) Audio-Editor is able to properly loop a sample or part of a sample without ever clicking (ofcourse you need to set the loop-points where the sample is on the "Zero-Crossing-Line otherwise you will always get clicks when you loop). But what i also encountered is that many players (also the Windows Media Player) is not able to loop a track or sample without clicking or at least a few milliseconds of silent when the Track jumps to the Beginning again.
Perhaps it just has to do with the fact that MMF needs to reposition the Play-Cursor to the Beginning of the File again and this leads to a short "hickup"? Perhaps it has to do how the File is accessed by the App or how the App handles the "Loop". But everything in this last paragraph is just speculation and perhaps an official Clickteam-Developer can shed some Light on how MMF handles Sound-Loops and how the mentioned problem can be 100% solved.
Thanks for this interessting Thread. I always wondered how strong Multimedia Fusion is on the "Sound and Music"-Side. I imagined once to create a Sequencer with MMF. But as i looked into some of the Objects and Expressions it seems like MMF has some limitations about handling sound-files or even be able to "create" them.
Greets to you all
jahkri
PS: Sorry for this long Post... :)
Re: Annoying click-sound in music loops.
If you have multi samples checked in runtime options you will always have a small delay beetween sounds.
You can read about it here:
http://www.clickteam.com/website/usa/img/uploads/tutorials/download/Application_Properties.pdf
Re: Annoying click-sound in music loops.
Thanks a lot Skyhunter. I was not aware of that fact about multisamples. Hopefully this will resolve the remaining tiny clicking for Keokeo.
Greets
jahkri
Re: Annoying click-sound in music loops.
I didn't know that. That kinda sucks. :/