How to prepare drum samples so they won't have that annoying fuzz tail?

[01GOD]

I tried various ways to get it to play a 909 style bass drum sound WITHOUT any annoying noisy tail, but it sadly seems to add noise to every sample. Tried smooth faded drum sound and also tried a drum sound that is immediately silent after a zero crossing.
Both sound good in Ableton and Audacity and when previewed from Finder.
Tried doing a smooth fade in both Ableton and Audacity.

I suspect that it's maybe because of the compressor, so that is why made a sample with a silence after a zero crossing. Sadly that didn't eliminate that issue yet though.

Using Audacity to export the sound as a MONO 16 BIT PCM file, and then converting with this converter: https://notisrac.github.io/FileToCArray/

Recommendations on how to eliminate that noisy tail? (Maybe that converter is adding that?)

Thanks in advance.

[copych]

Can you record a wav so I understand what kind of noise do you mean

[01GOD]

Ah, maybe later tonight. The recording gear is in the luggage now. It kinda sounds like a sizzling sound, so I had thought it was caused by the compressor compressing the natural oscillation fade too much. But there was still a little noise, regardless of if the sample had a smooth fade or instant silence after zero crossing.

[copych]

I can recall 2 issues caused by quite unexpected causes.

1. Some DACs have silence detection and produce some kind of clicks and noise when the sound ends. So lately I add 01 LSB to the output data, this way it never outputs long series of zeros.
2. Some audio systems like beatsaudio has crazy compression which turns itself on whenever it wants no matter if you turn it off in the settings menu. This would amplify line noise even if your output was crystal clear.

[01GOD]

Oh, interesting. Thanks for explaining that! That sound is straight from DAC to headphones, so I plan to try replacing the last 0 byte(s) with the smallest val.

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On Thu, Nov 20, 2025 at 2:31 PM copych ***@***.***> wrote: I can recall 2 issues caused by quite unexpected causes. 1. Some DACs have silence detection and produce some kind of clicks and noise when the sound ends. So lately I add 01 LSB to the output data, thit way it never outputs long series of zeros. 2. Some audio systems like beatsaudio has crazy compression which turns itself on whenever it wants no matter if you turn it off in the settings menu. This would amplify line noise even if your output was crystal clear. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#62 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ACJ7JDURUVB4NQ7RMPELLLD35VN2ZAVCNFSM6AAAAACMU7QD2WVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43URDJONRXK43TNFXW4Q3PNVWWK3TUHMYTKMBSGEYDQMI> . You are receiving this because you authored the thread.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[01GOD]

Here are the steps I did to import the drum sounds (this has the noise at the end):

1. Opened the wave file in Audacity, and exported the MONO edition of that as a 16 BIT SIGNED PCM WAV
2. Used this tool to convert it:

[01GOD]

I am wondering if maybe I should export RAW instead of WAV from Audacity. I think I maybe did that before.

[01GOD]

Actually, tried it with byte and raw, and that seems better. However, it seems that maybe something in ears (one ear has tinnitus) may be causing that buzz sound (it may not actually be a sound) at the end. Maybe anyway. When I switched headphones, the buzz at end was mainly only heard through the ear that doesn't have the tinnitus "tone".

[copych]

Why do you use c files instead of uploading filesystem? Btw, there were the errors in wav loading, but I seem to resolve them long ago. Though if you use some old version, it may have some glitches...

[01GOD]

Oh, using the file system originally seemed too involved. Haha! Obviously doing it this way has been MUCH more involved than that would have been though. LOL.
I had added a handclap array quickly before, so thought adding the new bass drum would be as easy. I hopefully made notes about how I did that handclap, and hopefully will find those notes.

[01GOD]

Actually remembered later that a main reason I hadn't used littlefs sample loading and storage is because I wanted to keep the sample player lightweight in case it needed to be replaced.
Anyway, shortening that bass drum sample thankfully eliminated that past issue where it was randomly missing some of those bass drum plays.

[copych]

Can you record dac playback to make sure the noise is recorded and seen , not just perceptual. Also this may suggest the place to search for the bug.

[01GOD]

I agree that it would be good to have a look at the recorded wave. Planning to get the audio interface out of luggage soon. Likely later today.
Admittedly been flipping out a little after realized how much differently these ears hear that same audio. Guess I should maybe focus on more visual and mechatronics related software engineering in the future.

[01GOD]

Surprisingly it doesn't play properly at all without the header bytes. So RAW headerless didn't seem to function.
Have noticed that it seems the ear with the tinnitus is maybe blurring the noise some, while the other ear is likely (THANKFULLY) accurate. Still don't know what is causing that. Made another export, carefully after that 909 faded out and at a zero crossing.

This code is from at least as early as March of 2025, so maybe it has that wav loader issue?

[01GOD]

By the way, every long once in a while (seems random) it misses a bass drum hit. That happens about the same amount at 120 BPM as it does at 170 BPM. That may only happen on longer bass drum samples though. Don't remember it happening on the original shorter drum sound.