Archive of the former Yahoo!Groups mailing list: MOTM

I am confused as to how you can tell mewhy my clicking occurs when you haven’t bothered to speak with me, notlisten to the sound file.  “100% cetertain”  gezz.

 

It’s VC leak.  If you have a lowfreq signal & chop it off, of course it will click.  That’s not whatI’m talking about.

 

Listen to the sound file & look at it,and then tell me you’re 100% certain.

 

Sheesh.

 

 

Now I'm going to grit my teeth and contribute mytwo cents worth.

Paul S. is 100% correct in his evaluation of whythis clicking occurs.
I spend countless hours editing sound files inProTools and I can tell
you for a fact that anytime you cut a waveform itwill click unless
the cut occors at the zero crossing.  This isbecause the edit (which
acts exactly as a fast envelope generator drivin aVCA) causes the
waveform to change value instantaneously (ornearly so.)  If you
looked at a frequency plot of the result you wouldsee a noise spike
or a click. 

There are two ways around this in ProTools. Either you make a fade
instead of a cut (which is the same thing aslengthening the attack
and decay time on an EG)  or you make surethe cut is at a zero
crossing.  The lower the frequency, the moreyou may have to shift the
edit point to hit the zero crossing.  Thistends to cause the edit to
be either early or late.

It may be possible to build an EG that delays itattack until the
incoming waveform crosses zero, especially if theattack is set very
short.  It is also possible that if you wereusing a DCO instead of a
VCO, you could cause the DCO to start its waveformat the leading edge
of a gate signal.  Digital synths may in factdo this.

I have owned quite a large number of analog synthsover the years and
they have all clicked with too fast of an attackon low notes.  I
can't say that my MOTM clicks any worse than anyother synth under
those conditions and I do have both 190 and 110VCAs.  I have never
found the clicking that does occor to beobjectionable anyway.

I would also agree that the speakers may be partof the problem.  A
speaker cone cannot move instantaneously, (Ibelieve for it to do so
would require infinite energy.)  When aspeaker cone tries to move
faster than it is capable of moving, all sorts ofweird transients can
result.  This problem may disappear whenusing a sub, as the subs
frequency response is severely limited and thetransients may be
stopped by the crossover.  The crossover mayalso cause enough phase
shift at the transition point to spread out thetransient in the
tweeters making it less objectionable.

To expect the VCA/EG combination not to click atlow frequencies under
fast transients, without implementing some kind ofcomsensation
strategy is to expect Paul S. to violate the lawsof physics.

Paul H.