Reducing pops & clicks

What it is

Old records collect dust and scratches, and the needle turns them into pops — sharp little bangs that were never part of the music. Flip the Reduce pops and clicks switch on the export screen and we find the sharp ones and take them out as your files are written.

Reduce, not remove. A record's surface noise is part of the record, and we leave it alone. What we go after is the stuff that pulls your ear away from the song.

Where the switch lives

On every vinyl record, the export screen carries the switch next to your export format. It's there in the expanded view too, so you can flip it wherever you're working. Cassettes don't get one — no needle, no pops.

The switch starts off. If you'd rather it started on for every record, settings has a setting for that: ask each time, or always. Flipping the switch on a record only changes that record; the setting stays where you left it.

How we decide what to touch

We don't read the record until you export. Then every track reads itself, on its own. A track whose loudest spikes are the music — a snare hit, a plucked string — reads as clean, and we leave it exactly as it is, switch or no switch. A track whose loudest spikes are needle-sharp reads as rough, and that's the one we work on.

So a record with a clean side and a rough side gets only the rough side touched. A clean record with the switch on comes out untouched.

How we reduce

A pop is a jump the music never makes: sample to sample, it's a cliff where a drum is a hill. That's what we look for.

The big ones we cut out — the way a careful hand does it in an editor. The pop is deleted, tight to its peak, and the music is joined across the gap. Both channels, the same slice, so the stereo image never drifts.

The small ones we redraw. Each is a footprint of a moment, and we fill it from the music on either side, again in both channels, and never louder than the music around it.

What you see when it's done

The Done screen tells you the count: how many pops and clicks were cleaned across the album. If every track read clean, it says so — none detected. That number is the only one we show, and it's the real one.

A track may come back a hair shorter

Each cut removes a sliver of time. Across a whole song that adds up to a fraction of a second. You won't hear the difference in length. You will hear the pops gone.

A nice side effect

Pops are usually the loudest thing on a rough record, and loudness is set by the loudest peak. With the pops gone, MP3 exports — which we level for you — can sit the music itself louder. The record doesn't just sound cleaner; it sounds more present.

What it doesn't do

It won't remove steady surface noise, hiss, or crackle. That constant texture on a well-loved pressing is a different animal, and we'd rather leave your music honest than smear it.

It doesn't fix skips yet. When the needle jumps, it leaves a longer stretch of disturbed music behind it; today we only clip the spike at the front of it. That one is on our list.

It never touches your original recording. Everything happens in the exported files — the file you uploaded stays exactly as you recorded it.

A note for the archivists

A reduced export is no longer a bit-for-bit copy of your recording. That's the whole idea — but it's your call to make, which is why the switch starts off. If you're preserving as well as listening, a fine ritual: export once with the switch off for the vault, and once with it on for the everyday library. Your original recording is never modified either way.

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