Cool Edit Users (or others) & Clicks

DC offset has little or nothing to do with your clicks. Especially if you've torn out your hair after doing DC analysis and seeing 0% offset!

Problem: Akai doesn't recognize the full .WAV spec. But your PC does. So you play the sample on the PC, sounds good. Move to the MPC, and it clicks at the beginning of every sample.

CURE: Before saving, turn off the "Save additional information" in Cool Edit. This puts a header at the beginning of the file, with all the extra info about the sample, who created it, yada yada. Akai misreads this as sample data!! Turn that off, and your clicks are gone.

You can see this by editing a problematic wav in the MPC. Go to TRIM mode, select the Start point, hit Window to zoom in. You'll see some garbage at the beginning of your sample. Scroll out 1024 points, and you'll see the beginning of your real sample. Exactly 1K of header info ruining your day.

If you're like me and have a bunch of samples that already have this problem, convert them using the Batch file converter.

1.) open any .wav, do a Save As...
- unclick the "Save additional info" box
- do what ever with your saved file
2.) Open File -> Batch File Convert
3.) In the Wizard:
-1. Select the list of files
-2. Uncheck Convert Format
-3. Select Windows PCM as the format
-4. Make your destination.

- hit RUN and every file you started with will be resaved without the extra header info. takes 2 minutes.

So in CoolEdit, what are those .pk files for? I thought those where the files where the extra info was saved.

If you goto [View] -> Wave Properties, you'll see what's added to the .wav itself. It's not cool edit specific, and has things that *can* be added to a .wav, but aren't by all all programs. .WAV is a wrapper created by Microsoft that can hold just about any type of wav, including MP3, and there's info in the header containing what type it is, sample rate, stereo/mono, etc. Cool Edit just gives you the option of using an extended format of the wrapper. You'd probably want to use that stuff if you ever send files to a mastering house.

The .pk is primarily to help display the file quickly, along with any cool-edit specific info. There's a way to turn those off if you don't like it.

how do you turn those off?

[Options] -> Settings -> Display (tab) -> uncheck "Save Peak Cache Files"