The Find Dialog

Tools Menu

The Find dialog searches for clicks and pops, volume levels, or silent breaks in a sound signal. To display this dialog, choose Find from the Tools menu.

Item

Description

Find

Choose a mode from the drop-down list to specify the type of data you want to find:

Glitch

Clicks and pops are unwanted sounds often found or worn records or on audio tape as a result of poor splicing, and they are seen as sharp glitches in the normal curve of a waveform.

The Glitch search algorithm looks at a waveform, starting at the cursor position, and determines when a glitch occurs based on the Threshold slope and Sensitivity settings. The cursor is then moved to the detected glitch to allow for further editing. You can use the Pencil tool to draw a smooth curve over the glitch to remove it.

Level equal to or above

Finds the next point in time after the cursor position when the waveform reaches the level specified by the Threshold level fader.

End of silent region

Moves the cursor to the end of the next silent break. Use the Threshold level fader to determine the sound level that will be treated as silence.

Largest peak

Moves the cursor to the next largest peak amplitude.

Searches progress from the current cursor position forward. To find the largest peak in a file, set the cursor to the beginning of the sound file or select all data before processing.

Threshold slope/level

When Glitch is selected in the Find drop-down list, drag the slider to determine the minimum slope (steepness) of the glitch. A high setting will only detect glitches with a high slope, while a low setting will detect both low and high-sloped glitches.

When Level equal to or above is selected in the Find drop-down list, drag the fader to determine the sound level to search for.

When End of silent region is selected in the Find drop-down list, drag the fader to determine the sound level that will be treated as silence. The Silence search will move the cursor to the next position where the level goes below and then back above the silence threshold level.

Sensitivity

When Glitch is selected in the Find drop-down list, drag the slider to determine how the algorithm looks for glitches:

  • With a high Sensitivity setting, any part of the waveform with a slope above the Threshold slope is detected as a glitch.

  • Lower Sensitivity settings force the glitch finder to verify that the high-sloped waveform is a glitch and not part of the original, smooth waveform.

If no glitches are detected, but you can hear clicks or pops, try lowering the Threshold slope and/or raising the Sensitivity. If the search is falsely detecting glitches, lower the Sensitivity and/or raise the Threshold slope.