User guide

Chapter 21 Editing Audio in the Sample Editor 543
The “correct” value depends on the quality of the material, and your own personal
taste. Good quality material should be edited using Min or values close to it. You will
probably only notice minor changes in the sound. Bad (noisy) quality material should
be processed at higher values, or even Max. If the setting is too high, the treble
component of the signal will be reduced.
3 Click the Process button to execute the function.
Note: The Silencer function is optimized for normalized data. Low level material should
be normalized before processing.
Spike Reduction
The aim of Spike Reduction is to identify and reduce signals such as pops, clicks, or
digital spikes, in order to reconstruct a hypothetical original signal.
To use spike reduction:
1 Turn the Noise Reduction function off, by moving the Strength slider to the extreme
right.
This ensures that only the Spike Reduction function is active.
2 Drag the Sensitivity slider to the desired position. This parameter determines the
threshold level used for the recognition of spikes (loud bits) in the audio file.
 When set to High (sensitivity), relatively small signal spikes are identified.
 When set to Auto, the threshold is controlled automatically. Useful on most
material.
 Use Low to identify most signal peaks as spikes.
3 Drag the Method slider to determine how spikes are processed.
 Gentle is the weakest algorithm, and only slightly smooths the original signal.
 Aggressive is the strongest, and has a very noticeable impact on the audio.
 The Re-build setting completely replaces the (often unusable) original signal with
an artificially generated estimate of the original signal, at the identified points. This
synthesized signal is created by analyzing the audio material surrounding these
points.
All of these algorithms filter the original signal at the identified spike points.
4 Click the Process button to execute the function.
Experiment with the parameters. If the Sensitivity slider is set to High (or close to it),
there’s a danger that very sharp transients in the main signal will be identified as spikes.
Depending on the audio material, it’s sometimes impossible for the Silencer to
distinguish between signals you want to keep, and signals you want to eliminate. This
is particularly the case if the decision between spike or main signal is merely a matter
of taste—with some click-like bass drum sounds, for example. The attack phase of
these sounds can have similar characteristics to static on vinyl records.