Hi all,
I am in the final stages of getting an album done, and I got the masters back last night from the mastering engineer.
On one particular track, the right rhythm guitar had a fair few pops and clicks in it. On most others there are some fainting clicks and pops, but it could be me "hearing" the pops and clicks as I am a little paranoid about the integrity of my tracks at this point.
Anyways, on the track in question, I opened up the mix in logic and checked the track in solo, and true enough there were pops and clicks, albeit faint ones. You wouldn't hear it in the full mix, but the master was squashed with a limiter that made these things more obvious. Its not "Death Magnetic" squashed, but it is loud enough to be competitive with more "famouser" band releases.
In a few of the other tracks, there are some very obvious and loud "clicks" now and again, that can be quite noticeable if you look for them. Its gotten me paranoid now that I have been going back over a couple of tracks last night comping away anything that I think could be perceived as a "flaw"....to the point that I wasted 2 hours doing this until realising that I could never be happy and just reverted to a pre-comping-like-a-mad-man save file! (Glad I did....its music made by humans, not robots....not YET anyways! )
Since I recorded these tracks with the Kemper direct, it makes me question... are some profiles more "clicky" than others?
My guitar for this track had Seymour Duncan Blackouts and I used the bridge pickup.
The culprit/profile in question above is the Keith Merrow "Shorted Out" profile with no pedals in the chain....just the guitar and the amp and cab profile tone.
Anyways, long story short, I tried to fix the clicks by moving around parts, but I realised after an hour or so that I was just "turd polishing" at this point, so I re-recorded the part with a different profile.
Job done in 45mins! (4 min track, about 4-5 good takes, wasted about 10 mins in dud takes and tuning times between takes.... and the rest just some random noodling around! )
Is this simply a "some profiles are more "click-prone" than others" type of scenario, or are there some steps to take to prevent this from happening?
Know-a-days I actively set the Kemper as the master clock with my interface (UAD Apollo) running at 44.1KHz and I leave the constant latency switch engaged on my Kemper in case I need to re-amp. ( I always record out a DI also from the KPA). I will admit, when I originally tracked the song, I cannot remember if I did or knew to set the KPA as the master clock. Could this be a clocking issue?
I may have indeed set the KPA as the master...I cannot honestly remember, and I was too green at the time to take notes of that detail!
I use Logic 9.1.8 with OSX 10.8.5 and a UAD Apollo as my audio interface FWIW. I use a KPA Powerhead v2.3 (public release) and I do all my recording over SPDIF. Sometimes I mic up my cab and crank a profile through my 4x12, but I didnt on this album.
thanks!