Audio track pops due to break in Pitch Edit

[jonnhanks]

I have been noticing pops in my audio tracks, mostly vocals and guitars, that are killing my recordings.
They are not happening at the start/end of clips, but "mid audio" and they seem to be happening due to gaps appearing in the audio clip within Pitch Edit.
The full audio clip doesn't have any gaps, but when I open the clip in Pitch Edit I can see that there are tiny gaps in the audio that are being created by the way Pitch Edit is recreating the sound (see images below for more clarity).

R11 whole clip.PNG (80.96 KiB) Viewed 925 times

R11 pitch edit.PNG (329.05 KiB) Viewed 925 times

Does anyone know of anyway to "fill in" these gaps?
If I snip the clip and add fade ins/outs this sounds really bad.

The Pitch Edit mode seems to be degrading the sound quality of that clip, as when I have edited a bass note volume within Pitch Edit the whole clip becomes warped.

Is it possible that the algorithm that "pitches" the audio is creating these pops and warps?

[Ottostrom]

The Pitch Edit mode seems to be degrading the sound quality of that clip, as when I have edited a bass note volume within Pitch Edit the whole clip becomes warped.

Is it possible that the algorithm that "pitches" the audio is creating these pops and warps?

Yes, the stretching algorithm is most likely causing unwanted changes if you're editing something else than vocals. If you even enter Pitch Edit the stretch mode for that audio clip changes to the Vocal mode (as that appears to be the only stretching algorithm that works with Pitch Edit).

Don't know if that is what's causing those small gaps as I've never encountered them myself

[guitfnky]

I haven’t encountered pops, but pitch editing can definitely add artifacts sometimes, even in vocals, especially in “non-pitched” parts of audio (breaths, consonants, and the like). wouldn’t be surprised if it’s the same issue.

[jonnhanks]

Thanks for the replies.

They get worse the more I open the pitch edit screen, and now I have 4 tracks that have several clicks n pops mid note.
It's really frustrating when you spend so much time mixing the song together, only to hear loud pops appearing where there weren't any before. It makes it sound so unprofessional, and I would think the producer (i.e. me) was an amateur that hasn't faded in/out of clips to remove the pops. But this is un-editable and I've got to re-record those parts again, with the worry that it will happen on those clips too.

Makes me want to drop Reason altogether and switch to another DAW.

[guitfnky]

Thanks for the replies.

They get worse the more I open the pitch edit screen, and now I have 4 tracks that have several clicks n pops mid note.
It's really frustrating when you spend so much time mixing the song together, only to hear loud pops appearing where there weren't any before. It makes it sound so unprofessional, and I would think the producer (i.e. me) was an amateur that hasn't faded in/out of clips to remove the pops. But this is un-editable and I've got to re-record those parts again, with the worry that it will happen on those clips too.

Makes me want to drop Reason altogether and switch to another DAW.

one thing you could maybe try is splitting the offending parts into separate clips (can do this right within pitch editor)—then right click the clip with the glitch (which shouldn’t have any pitch info to edit anyway) and reset that. that *should* remove any weirdness the pitch editor is introducing.

yeah, not a great option, I know…

[Ottostrom]

Thanks for the replies.

They get worse the more I open the pitch edit screen, and now I have 4 tracks that have several clicks n pops mid note.
It's really frustrating when you spend so much time mixing the song together, only to hear loud pops appearing where there weren't any before. It makes it sound so unprofessional, and I would think the producer (i.e. me) was an amateur that hasn't faded in/out of clips to remove the pops. But this is un-editable and I've got to re-record those parts again, with the worry that it will happen on those clips too.

Makes me want to drop Reason altogether and switch to another DAW.

I totally get your frustration. However, I think I might have a solution which might restore your original audio clips.
Right click on your audio in the sequencer and select "Disable Stretch". From my quick test this restored the audio without any of the changes I had made in Pitch Edit, and from here you can bounce the relevant channels to have it as you started (bouncing it lets you enable stretch again on the new audio without any weirdness). Just remember that Pitch Edit might as well be called Vocal Edit and will in most cases only work as intended on vocal material.
If you want to adjust a note on something like a bass recording you could go into Comp Edit and duplicate your track in there, then you cut in the note you want to edit and transpose only that track. This lets you use the All Around or Melody stretch modes which works better for that kind of audio. You can also just split it right in the sequencer and transpose it there which is pretty easy now that we have crossfade for audio

[jonnhanks]

I've tried both your suggestions, but both still have a noticeable pop afterwards.

The best thing I've managed to do is split the glitched part into a new clip and delete it, then stretch the 2 "good" parts together with a fast fade in/out. There is still a gentle audible bump there, but at least there isn't a click sound. It will take some time to fix all the clicks that have appeared though.

I've noticed it on a guitar part too, but I'm pretty sure that I've not opened that clip in the pitch editor though. However, I'm sure if I did there would be a tiny gap in the audio, even though the main clip looks fine (no obvious spike in the waveform).

I wonder if it's anything to do with the audio rendering?
I'm using these settings, as the playback sounds the best:

R11 audio settings.PNG (128.9 KiB) Viewed 875 times

Again, thanks for your replies and suggestions!

[MuttReason]

Thanks for the replies.

They get worse the more I open the pitch edit screen, and now I have 4 tracks that have several clicks n pops mid note.
It's really frustrating when you spend so much time mixing the song together, only to hear loud pops appearing where there weren't any before. It makes it sound so unprofessional, and I would think the producer (i.e. me) was an amateur that hasn't faded in/out of clips to remove the pops. But this is un-editable and I've got to re-record those parts again, with the worry that it will happen on those clips too.

Makes me want to drop Reason altogether and switch to another DAW.

This won't help with your current problem I'm afraid but one other suggestion for the future... always carry out this kind of operation on a duplicate copy of the audio track, not the audio track itself. In any DAW I've used, I've always been paranoid about certain non-destructive edits and processes (pitch editing and slicing for example) turning out to be irreversible (or un-undoable) in some way, ruining a good take forever. So when I get a take I like, I name it something like 'master [XX instrument/vox] take' then immediately create an exact copy and mute/archive the original and minimise its channel on the DAW arrangement page. I then chop/tweak/whatever the copy and if all is fine, I'll rename that as the 'good' take, and if I make a mess of it (or something goes wrong in the DAW) I always have the option of falling back to the original master that I've muted/archived.

[jonnhanks]

This won't help with your current problem I'm afraid but one other suggestion for the future... always carry out this kind of operation on a duplicate copy of the audio track, not the audio track itself. In any DAW I've used, I've always been paranoid about certain non-destructive edits and processes (pitch editing and slicing for example) turning out to be irreversible (or un-undoable) in some way, ruining a good take forever. So when I get a take I like, I name it something like 'master [XX instrument/vox] take' then immediately create an exact copy and mute/archive the original and minimise its channel on the DAW arrangement page. I then chop/tweak/whatever the copy and if all is fine, I'll rename that as the 'good' take, and if I make a mess of it (or something goes wrong in the DAW) I always have the option of falling back to the original master that I've muted/archived.

Thank you, that's a great suggestion! I am 100% going to do that from now on, and I feel the fool for not implementing such tactics before. You, my friend, are a Legend!

[Ottostrom]

I've noticed it on a guitar part too, but I'm pretty sure that I've not opened that clip in the pitch editor though. However, I'm sure if I did there would be a tiny gap in the audio, even though the main clip looks fine (no obvious spike in the waveform).

I wonder if it's anything to do with the audio rendering?
I'm using these settings, as the playback sounds the best:

Again, thanks for your replies and suggestions!

It's not impossible that the problem actually originates from the recording process itself. Now that I think about it I might have had something similar many years ago when I hadn't set up my audio interface correctly and was running it with Asio4all. I have some memory of not being able to record any longer segments cause some audio glitch would get baked into the recorded track. The best step forward would probably be to record some test tracks and see if the pops appear without doing any editing on them.

[guitfnky]

I've noticed it on a guitar part too, but I'm pretty sure that I've not opened that clip in the pitch editor though. However, I'm sure if I did there would be a tiny gap in the audio, even though the main clip looks fine (no obvious spike in the waveform).

I wonder if it's anything to do with the audio rendering?
I'm using these settings, as the playback sounds the best:

Again, thanks for your replies and suggestions!

It's not impossible that the problem actually originates from the recording process itself. Now that I think about it I might have had something similar many years ago when I hadn't set up my audio interface correctly and was running it with Asio4all. I have some memory of not being able to record any longer segments cause some audio glitch would get baked into the recorded track. The best step forward would probably be to record some test tracks and see if the pops appear without doing any editing on them.

you don’t even need to do a separate test, thankfully. you can open your project, and in the pitch editor, right click on the clip that has the pops/clicks/artifacts, and reset the pitch. if it plays back fine, it’s the editor creating artifacts. if not, it’s likely something that’s baked into the recording. you can then just close out without saving.

[Ottostrom]

It's not impossible that the problem actually originates from the recording process itself. Now that I think about it I might have had something similar many years ago when I hadn't set up my audio interface correctly and was running it with Asio4all. I have some memory of not being able to record any longer segments cause some audio glitch would get baked into the recorded track. The best step forward would probably be to record some test tracks and see if the pops appear without doing any editing on them.

you don’t even need to do a separate test, thankfully. you can open your project, and in the pitch editor, right click on the clip that has the pops/clicks/artifacts, and reset the pitch. if it plays back fine, it’s the editor creating artifacts. if not, it’s likely something that’s baked into the recording. you can then just close out without saving.

True. And if he did test my Disable Stretch method and that didn't help then the problem should be in the recording, since disabling stretch also negates all the pitch adjustments.

[MuttReason]

This won't help with your current problem I'm afraid but one other suggestion for the future... always carry out this kind of operation on a duplicate copy of the audio track, not the audio track itself. In any DAW I've used, I've always been paranoid about certain non-destructive edits and processes (pitch editing and slicing for example) turning out to be irreversible (or un-undoable) in some way, ruining a good take forever. So when I get a take I like, I name it something like 'master [XX instrument/vox] take' then immediately create an exact copy and mute/archive the original and minimise its channel on the DAW arrangement page. I then chop/tweak/whatever the copy and if all is fine, I'll rename that as the 'good' take, and if I make a mess of it (or something goes wrong in the DAW) I always have the option of falling back to the original master that I've muted/archived.

Thank you, that's a great suggestion! I am 100% going to do that from now on, and I feel the fool for not implementing such tactics before. You, my friend, are a Legend!

You’re very welcome! Sorry it’s too late for this song (unless you’re able to find a fix).

While we’re on the subject of avoiding the grief of lost work…. another bit of advice when you’re working on a project over multiple days is never to do a simple “save” when saving your work for the first time that day, do a “save as… “ and put today’s date in the filename ahead of the name of the project and save the project into a folder with the name of the project. So if the project is a song called “Blue room” (crappy random name I just made up), when you open the project and make changes, save that day’s version as “21Oct2021BlueRoom.reason” and save it into a folder named “Blue Room”. Each day you work on the same project, you save the project as a new file with a date stamp in the title. All of which means if something bad happens (eg a crash corrupts the project file) you lose a day’s work (worst case) not many days (or weeks) of work. Other DAWs make this backup/alternate process easier (Ableton or Logic for example) but with Reason you need to do it manually.

[jam-s]

I'm using these settings, as the playback sounds the best:
R11 audio settings.PNG

I'd try to turn off hyper-threading. In most cases it causes worse performance and might also lead to glitches when a virtual core switch happens at a bad time.

[tanni]

I'm using these settings, as the playback sounds the best:
R11 audio settings.PNG

I'd try to turn off hyper-threading. In most cases it causes worse performance and might also lead to glitches when a virtual core switch happens at a bad time.

yes, since I disable Hyper-threading Reason runs much smoother and better for me too.
And maybe you will try to get an ASIO driver, and not the DX driver.

[jonnhanks]

Yea I think you're right with the problem arising at the recording stage. After trying your suggestions and still having the clicks n pops, it does suggest that the recording process is producing random glitches.
I'm using a Boss BR-800 as my interface, and the buffer size within Reason isn't that great for recording, unless I have a long latency which needs to be compensated for. Also, I have to use my Boss to record audio and I have to set the driver to ASIO BR-800, but when it's playing as I recording it can sometimes lag. It might be a these points where glitches occur in the audio track.
What is a suitable sample rate when recording that I should be looking to set it to?
I'll switch off hyper-threading too and hopefully that will improve the playback quality. I'll definitely use that "Save As" tip too, that makes a lot of sense and I often question whether I should be saving to one master file or split them into daily versions.

I was using the ASIO Realtek driver, however, it was lagging a lot and constantly creating pops and the buffer size drops. When I switched to DX, which looks like it has a much higher buffer size, it immediately played smoother and didn't lag.

Thank you!!

[Ottostrom]

Yea I think you're right with the problem arising at the recording stage. After trying your suggestions and still having the clicks n pops, it does suggest that the recording process is producing random glitches.
I'm using a Boss BR-800 as my interface, and the buffer size within Reason isn't that great for recording, unless I have a long latency which needs to be compensated for. Also, I have to use my Boss to record audio and I have to set the driver to ASIO BR-800, but when it's playing as I recording it can sometimes lag. It might be a these points where glitches occur in the audio track.
What is a suitable sample rate when recording that I should be looking to set it to?
I'll switch off hyper-threading too and hopefully that will improve the playback quality. I'll definitely use that "Save As" tip too, that makes a lot of sense and I often question whether I should be saving to one master file or split them into daily versions.

I was using the ASIO Realtek driver, however, it was lagging a lot and constantly creating pops and the buffer size drops. When I switched to DX, which looks like it has a much higher buffer size, it immediately played smoother and didn't lag.

Thank you!!

Yeah the glitches most likely occur when it lags while you're recording.
Using your Boss BR-800 as your audio interface and letting it do all your audio work should be a much smoother experience with less latency than using DX. Have you tried updating the drivers on that thing?
As for sample rate, 44.1k is fine. I run 48k with a buffer size of 256 samples using the ASIO drivers for my Focusrite interface.

Side note: Had to look up what kind of interface that Boss BR-800 was and this is one of the most ridiculous vocal demos I've heard

[EnochLight]

The Pitch Edit mode seems to be degrading the sound quality of that clip, as when I have edited a bass note volume within Pitch Edit the whole clip becomes warped.

Just a note: Reason's audio Pitch Editor is tailored for 100% dry recorded monophonic human vocals - and that's it. Attempting to use it on an actual bass (or anything but vocals) is not its intended use, and you'll usually never get the kind of results you'd get from something more specialized such as Celemony's Melodyne Editor. So seeing the whole clip of your bass note get "warped" is not surprising. For melodic/polyphonic/bass/strings/etc and pretty much any other audio other than vocals, try changing the audio clip's pitch using the F8 Pitch transpose feature for best results. I mean you can still edit any audio in the Slice Edit mode for warping audio between slice markers to correct timing, but the Pitch transpose seems to be more "transparent" IMHO. Obviously YMMV...

I also agree keeping Hyperthreading off will almost always result in better performance. And you really need to use a proper ASIO driver. Maybe try using ASIO4ALL instead? Those things won't fix the issue you're having, but it's worth being said again.

Finally, I'd also recommend watching this excellent Pitch Editor tutorial that was featured when Reason first got it. Tends to cover some great tips: