Quick answer: first work out whether the sound is baked into the edit or only shows up during playback. A click at a cut usually comes from an abrupt waveform jump, a clip edge or a hard mute. Playback crackling can come from monitoring, buffer load, a sample-rate mismatch, media decoding or an overloaded timeline. The fixes overlap, but lumping both together as “bad audio” wastes time.
For a click at an edit point, zoom into the waveform, nudge the cut toward a zero crossing where you can, add a very short crossfade or fade handle, and listen again. For clicks inside the recording, isolate the event and repair the smallest region that contains it. Don't paper over every pop with a long fade; that dulls consonants and transients.
Diagnose the sound before editing
Click happens at the start or end of a clip
This is usually an edit discontinuity. The waveform gets cut while it's away from zero, so the speaker or music jumps from one amplitude to another. A short fade-in or fade-out often does the job.
Click happens at a crosscut between two clips
The two clips may meet at different levels, phases or waveforms. A short crossfade can smooth the join. If they overlap badly, choose the cleanest region and rebuild the edit; a large transition only hides it.
Click is inside one continuous recording
The source may hold a mouth click, cable movement, an edit artifact or a digital glitch. Find the exact sample region, split or isolate it, and repair it locally. A global noise processor isn't designed to remove one isolated transient cleanly.
Crackling follows playback load
If the exported file is clean but the Viewer or Fairlight playback crackles, look at the monitoring path and system load. Simplify the timeline, cache the heavy effects and confirm the audio device and sample-rate settings. For audio plugins, right-click the clip and choose Cache Audio Effects. The site's render cache guide explains how to keep playback performance separate from final media.
Fix a click at a clip edge
- Open the Edit or Fairlight page and make the audio track taller.
- Zoom in until you can see the waveform around the cut.
- Place the cut near a zero crossing if the edit still works for the music or the dialogue timing.
- Drag a short fade handle from the clip edge, or add a short crossfade where two clips overlap.
- Listen at normal level, then again with the waveform in view.
- Make sure the fade didn't remove the first consonant, the room tone or a transient you need.
A zero crossing is the point where the waveform passes through its center line. On the Fairlight page you don't have to guess: zoom to sample level and the waveform shows a zero crossing indicator line. The DaVinci Resolve 21.1 Reference Manual also notes that a crossfade between two clips automatically brings both sides to the zero crossing. It's still no guarantee of a perfect edit, since phase, ambience and neighboring clips matter, but it shrinks the jump you're asking the listener to hear.
Use the right crossfade
Resolve gives you more than one fade shape. On the Edit page the audio transition comes as Cross Fade +3 dB, -3 dB or 0 dB, each with a different power curve, and Fairlight's Batch Fades let you pick Equal Power or Equal Gain. A linear fade changes level predictably. An equal-power style crossfade usually holds perceived loudness better when two clips overlap, but it isn't automatically right for every spoken cut.
Use the shortest transition that removes the artifact:
- for a hard clip edge, start with a tiny fade-in or fade-out;
- for two similar room-tone clips, use a short crossfade and match their levels;
- for music, choose a curve that keeps the musical energy up instead of creating a dip;
- for dialogue, protect consonants and breaths before you lengthen the fade.
The site's audio fade guide covers the basic handles and timing choices. The aim here is the same: a continuous transition that doesn't hide a larger edit problem.
Repair an isolated click inside a clip
Find the click on the Fairlight waveform and mark a small range around it. The fix might be a tiny cut with a short crossfade or a quick volume dip. Fairlight FX has no dedicated de-click plugin, but the Fairlight page offers something more surgical: zoom all the way in until the samples appear as control points, then drag a single sample up or down, or drag across a run of samples to redraw that bit of waveform. It's non-destructive, and Reset Edited Samples in the clip's right-click menu puts everything back. Keep the repair local; processing the entire clip can change the noise floor and voice texture.
If you cut the click out, keep room tone around the edit. A silent hole can sound worse than the original click. Borrow a nearby clean ambience region only when it matches the recording and doesn't create a loop the listener can pick up.
For a mouth click or lip smack, a small gain reduction is often more transparent than muting the whole syllable. For a digital spike, look at the surrounding samples and compare the repaired region with the original at normal listening level.
Clicks caused by automation or abrupt mutes
Volume automation that jumps from one value to the next can make a click. So can a hard mute on a bus, or a plugin switching state between frames. Smooth the automation with a short ramp, and bypass the suspected processor to track down the source.
If the click follows a Fairlight effect, test the clip with that effect bypassed, then bring processors back one at a time. Heavy noise reduction, gates and limiters can make playback sound unstable when the system can't process them in real time, even though the final render is clean.
Playback crackling is a different problem
Run this sequence when the click isn't in the rendered file, or moves when you change the playback position:
- Play the same section after caching or rendering the heaviest effects.
- Check the selected audio output device and the operating system's sample rate.
- Open Preferences > System > Audio I/O. With System Audio, the Playback processing buffer size shows its latency right next to it; a smaller buffer only helps if the system can sustain it, and a larger one buys stability.
- Bypass heavy Fairlight plugins and test the clean timeline.
- Check for mismatched sample rates or media that needs to be conformed.
- Render a short test file and listen to it outside Resolve.
If the export is clean, stop cutting the waveform to fix a monitoring issue. If the crackle is in the export too, go back to the source clip, bus routing and processors.
Check the waveform and meters
A click can be a tiny spike that barely moves the overall meter reading. Zoom into the waveform and watch the meters while you listen. If the artifact lines up with clipping, bring down the clip or bus level before adding a fade. If the waveform is clean but the monitor crackles, stay with playback diagnosis.
Resolve's audio meters also help you tell a clip problem from a bus problem. If the clip meter spikes before the bus does, inspect the clip. If every clip sounds distorted only after a bus processor, look at that bus and its gain staging.
Do not confuse clicks with background noise
Noise reduction can lower a steady hiss or room tone; it won't reliably repair a discontinuity at an edit point. A third-party de-click process can target short artifacts, but it can't stand in for a clean edit when the cut itself is wrong. The site's background-noise guide and noise-reduction guide cover different problems.
Common mistakes
- Adding a long crossfade to every cut. You get audible dips and blurred dialogue.
- Fixing playback crackling with waveform edits. Test a render and the monitoring path first.
- Muting the entire syllable. Repair the smallest area that holds the click.
- Ignoring level matching. A level jump can sound like a pop even when the waveform crosses zero.
- Processing the master bus too early. Find out whether the artifact starts on the clip, the track or the bus.
- Listening only in headphones. Check speakers and a rendered file before you call the fix complete.
Final click and pop checklist
- The artifact was classified as an edit click, source click or playback problem.
- The waveform was inspected at the exact event.
- The cut sits at a practical zero crossing where possible.
- The shortest transparent fade or crossfade did the job.
- Room tone and consonants remain intact.
- Track, bus and master processors were tested one at a time.
- A short render was checked outside the timeline.
Clicks get much easier to fix once you stop treating every sharp sound as the same failure. Repair the waveform discontinuity at the edit, isolate a source artifact inside the clip, and save playback troubleshooting for the monitoring path and system load.
