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Okay, now here comes the fun part. Depending largely on the condition of the record that you are restoring, you will have fewer or more residual clicks left over from the automatic click removal procedure of the foregoing procedure. We will now go through the process of removing them manually, and it is in this area that the special features of Cool-Edit Pro and Adobe Audition really excel.
1--Load track 01 (or whatever) into your waveform editor. Select the first 10 secon,ds or so of the track. Zoom in to the selection. Click the icon on the toolbar that toggles between waveform views, so that you are now in spectral view. This is the view that makes it easy to distinguish clicks that can be barely discernable or invisible in the waveform views.
2--Right click the "play" arrow and select "Play View." You will often be switching between the "play view" option and the "play from cursor to end of view" option.
3--Now, with your headphones on, hit the spacebar. The selection should play to the end and stop. Did you hear/see a click that needs to be removed? If the answer is "no," hit the "page down" key, and this will advance you to the next section. Hit the spacebar to play the section; hit page down to advance to the next section. In this way, you can rapidly work your way through the track, looking for clicks. Here are some gifs showing you what to look for:
This shows a single click in the right (lower) channel at about 1:19.73
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This shows a single click in the left (upper) channel at about 1:28.23. Another event appearing in both channels (at 1:28.7) appears to be a click but is actually inaudible.
Large click at 1:42.63 extending across both channels.
You will soon discover that these clicks differ very little in appearance from many percussive effects, like gentle rim-shots on the drums. You cannot expect to do this just by what you see--you have to listen as well. Also, sometimes you will see something that looks like a click, but will actually be inaudible.
4--Okay, you've cornered your first authentic click. Select an area about 3 seconds in width with the click somewhere in it. Zoom in to the selection. Now, carefully select the click. Try not to bite off too much extra space on either side of the click. If you select too much, the click-pop eliminator will gag, and may shut down the program (when you restart, the software will offer to return you to the scene of the crime).
Some clicks appear in only one of the two channels (see examples above). If this is the case, you can select only the left or right channels by using the up-down arrows on your keyboard.
5--So now you've got your click isolated and selected. Go to effects/noise reduction/click-pop eliminator. The click-pop control box appears. At the bottom of the box, click "fill single click now." (leave the settings by this button at their default values: fft size "auto" checked; pop oversamples, 12; run size, 10). Your click should magically disappear, leaving the surrounding terrain pretty much undisturbed.
6--Now that you have just eliminated a click, you are going to make yourself an incredibly useful tool that will save you a lot of time. In the menu bar, click on favorites/edit favorites. The "favorites" control box appears. Click on "new. In the "name" space, put something like "single click."
Next, in the "press new shortcut key" space press a key-combination you can remember (I use alt+s, for 'single'). Then press "copy from last" to program the last effect you used (which was filling a single click). Finally press "save." From now on, every time you press your special key-combination, you will activate the "fill single click" effect without ever having to go through the menus. It's a real time saver.
7--You can see how it goes from here. Work your way through the track (spacebar-listen-page down; spacebar-listen-page down; spacebar-listen-page down) and fix all of the clicks. One caution--if you have a bad source file with lots of clicks to fix, you will want to click the "save" icon from time to time so that if the system crashes, you do not lose all of your work, but can go back and pick up where you left off.
8--Occasionally after you remove a residual click, it will leave behind a funny ghost, a soft wumpf that you cannot get rid of. If the "wumpf" is in both channels, I don't know of any solution to this. Just take a deep breath and say "Oh well . . .". Try to make the thought travel up through your chakras.
9--However, if the "wumpf" is only in one channel, you can get rid of it using the following general technique:
***SPECIAL BONUS ROUTINE***
1-First you are going to make yourself a pair of wonderful tools that you will find extremely useful. Load a sound file, any sound file, into Cool-Edit or Audition. Select a tiny section of the waveform--any tiny section. Now, go to effects/amplitude/channel mixer. The channel-mixer control box will open. In the "presets" section, click on "both=left." Click "OK." This will make the highlighted section of both channels identical to what was in the left channel.
2-Now, in the menu bar, go to favorites/edit favorites. In the control box that opens, click "new." In the name box enter "both=left." In the "press new shortcut key" box, press a key combination that will call-up this effect (I suggest alt+l). Now press "copy from last" and the "cool edit effect" box will fill itself with your last effect action (which was channel mixing, both=left). Finally, click "save," and then close. From now on, whenever you press alt+l, the software will process whatever is selected and make the content of the right channel the same as the contents of the left channel.
3-Now you are going to repeat step #2, but you are going to set a new key combination for both=right (I suggest alt+r). You now have a pair of tools with which you can very quickly make whatever is selected in one channel the same as what is selected in the other channel. Sometimes defects that are not amenable to the usual click-pop repair appear in one channel only. You can move in good waveform from the other channel to replace the bad section. Of course, if the two channels are radically different, this won't work so well (as in old stereo recordings where the instruments are radically segregated). However, in most modern stereo recordings where the channels are often quite similar, the small substitution cannot be detected. And, of course, in mono recordings, where both channels are supposed to be identical, this is an even more effective technique.
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