Clicks and pops - mouth clicks, lip smacks, digital pops, vinyl crackle - are among the most fixable problems in audio, because each one is a short, sharp transient event that a declicker can find and repair in isolation. The tool detects the sudden spike, removes it, and reconstructs the tiny slice of waveform underneath from the audio on either side, so the click disappears without leaving a hole. Done right it is invisible. The main thing is to declick at the correct stage - before compression, which would otherwise amplify every tick.
Why clicks are easy to remove
A click is a discontinuity: a spike that appears and vanishes in a fraction of a millisecond, far faster than any natural part of a voice or instrument. That sharpness is exactly what makes it detectable. A declicker scans for these abrupt jumps, flags them, and interpolates across the gap using the surrounding samples, which are highly predictable over such a tiny window. Because the repair spans only a sliver of time, the ear never notices the reconstruction.
This is different from steady problems like hiss or hum, which are continuous and need profiling or notching rather than event detection. Match the tool to the fault: declick for transient ticks, denoise for steady hiss, dehum for buzz. If your problem is a constant floor rather than discrete ticks, start with how to remove background noise from audio instead.
Removing each type of click
Mouth clicks and lip smacks
These are the little sticky ticks and smacks between words, caused by saliva and the tongue and lips separating. They are the most common click problem on close-mic vocals. A dedicated declick or de-click process, sometimes labelled mouth de-click, targets them specifically and removes them without dulling the consonants. Because they cluster in the gaps between phrases, they are easy for the tool to isolate.
Digital pops and glitches
Sharp digital pops come from buffer errors, dropped samples, or edits made at non-zero crossings. They are the loudest and sharpest of the family and declick tools remove them readily. For a single loud glitch, a spectral editor lets you zoom in and repair just that spot by hand.
Vinyl crackle and record noise
Vinyl produces a dense field of small clicks and crackle from dust and wear. A declick set to a higher sensitivity, often paired with a decrackle process, thins this out. Crackle is many tiny clicks at once, so decrackle handles the broadband sizzle while declick catches the bigger pops. Push it gently - too much sensitivity starts nibbling at the music.
Do it before compression
The single most important timing rule is to remove clicks before you compress. Compression turns up quiet detail to even out the level, and that includes every mouth click and tick, making them dramatically more audible in the finished track. Declick early, while the clicks are still relatively quiet and easy to isolate, and the later compression stage has nothing to amplify. Sauce's Audio Repair runs declick as part of its cleanup pass, so the ticks are gone before any level processing.
The same logic applies to de-essing and brightness. Both raise energy in the high frequencies where clicks live, so a click you left in will get sharper and more obvious once you brighten the take. Declicking up front means every later stage - compression, de-essing, presence lifts, polish - is working on a signal that has no ticks left to expose. It is the cheapest insurance in the whole cleanup chain.
What can and cannot be fixed
- Isolated mouth clicks and lip smacks - removes cleanly and invisibly. The ideal case.
- Sharp digital pops - removes readily; a single bad glitch can be spot-repaired in a spectral editor.
- Light to moderate vinyl crackle - thins out well with declick plus decrackle at sensible settings.
- Heavy, continuous crackle or a click on every word - improvable, but pushing the tool hard enough to catch them all starts softening transients and dulling the sound. Accept a little residual rather than over-processing.
- A click fused into a loud transient - hardest case, because there is little clean surrounding audio to reconstruct from. Spectral repair by hand does best.
A quick step-by-step
- Identify the type - mouth clicks in the gaps, digital pops, or dense vinyl crackle.
- Run declick early, before any compression, so the ticks are not amplified later.
- For crackle, add a decrackle process and raise sensitivity gently until the sizzle thins without dulling the audio.
- For a single stubborn glitch, zoom in with a spectral editor and repair just that spot.
- Compare against the original - if consonants or transients lost their edge, the sensitivity is too high, so back it off.
On a full vocal, declick sits early in the repair order, right after dehum - the complete sequence is in how to fix a bad vocal recording.
Prevention
Mouth clicks come from a dry mouth and close mic placement, so stay hydrated, keep water handy, and back off the mic slightly if smacks are constant. A pop filter helps with plosive pops on P and B sounds. For digital pops, make your edits at zero crossings and keep buffer sizes sensible during recording. Less to declick later always beats more.
Clean it up free. Run your recording through Sauce Audio Repair to knock down noise, hum, clicks and clipping in one pass.