i bounced a mix at 3am and now theres a cough in it that i dont remember coughing

finished a track last night around 3am, felt great about it, bounced it, went to bed. listened back this morning and at 2:14 there's a cough. clear as day. right under the bridge. i live alone. i didnt record any vocals for this one. its all synths and a drum machine i've had since college. my cat is the only other living thing in the apartment and im pretty sure she cant cough like a 60 year old man who smokes i checked every track in the session. nothing there. soloed everything, muted everything, still nothing. but its in the bounce. my best guess is some sample pack i grabbed years ago had a hidden one-shot in it and it got triggered somehow, but i cant find it, and this is starting to feel personal. the dumb part is it kinda works? it hits right before the drop and it sounds like someone in the room is about to say something and then just doesnt. my buddy heard it and said "oh nice, very lo-fi, very intentional." i did not correct him. lowkey so now im torn between spending another 4 hours hunting this thing down or just leaving it in and acting like i meant it anyone ever had a mystery sound end up in a bounce? what was it and

oh my goodness... thats exactly how a Dateline episode starts, I watched one Thursday night about a man who kept hearing noises in his house and I wont say how that ended!! But seriously... did you use any sample packs or vinyl crackle or "room tone" plugins?? My grandson Tyler makes beats in his bedroom and he found a guy clearing his throat buried in a free loop pack he downloaded... it only played when a certain pattern triggered so he never heard it when he soloed things. Some of those old drum machines have weird extra sounds hiding in the presets too... I'd check the bounce settings in case it pulled in something

...he found a guy clearing his throat...

lol thanks, thats exactly what i needed before bed... pretty sure its just the raccoon in the attic again, which i cant even trap without a permit from the city, apparently. also your post cut off at "did you us" so now theres two mysteries going on here

oh dear, my phone does that when I type too long... I was asking if you used any sample packs!! Tyler's throat-clearing guy only played once every eight bars, so he didn't notice it until he listened with headphones and I'd still check that before blaming the raccoon. although we had one in our garage last spring, and it got into the bird seed and scared the herons off the pond for a week... the city wanted a permit for us too, which seems a little silly when it's the raccoon breaking the rules and not you!! Just my two cents!!

ok so i soloed every track and the cough isnt on any of them. it only shows up in the bounce. i'm choosing not to think about what that means until i've had more coffee

also the city charging YOU a permit for the raccoon's crimes is so typical. my landlord once fined me for a mural a guy tagged on my storage unit, and it was the best thing on that whole block. i asked if i could keep it and he said no, then painted over it in a beige that looked like it was apologizing for itself

anyway the cough is kind of perfect for the bridge and i hate that. might keep it and credit it as "unknown" in the liner notes

solo every track and scrub to the timestamp. 9 times out of 10 its bleed on a vocal or room mic take you comped at 2am and forgot about. also check your sample folder, some drum kits come with crowd noise and coughs baked into the loops

[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.izotope.com/en/products/rx.html[/URL]

spectral repair gets it out in like 10 seconds if you cant find the source

just went back and soloed every track one at a time and it's not on any of them only shows up in the full bounce so either the master bus is haunted or i'm losing it my analog watch says it happens at 2:47 into the song, which is also about when i stopped paying attention to anything, so that tracks. i'll try the spectral repair thing tomorrow i guess. honestly i'm not paying for RX to fix a cough i didnt cough though 🤦

you dont have to pay. audacity does spectral selection for free, just box the cough in spectrogram view and hit it with the spectral edit effects

[URL unfurl="true"]https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/spectral_selection.html[/URL]

and once you find which track its on you prob dont need repair at all. just cut that region and crossfade it, takes 5 seconds. also

sorry about the cut off post earlier my phone does that!! one more thing to check... was a mic track still armed or input monitoring on when you bounced?? Tyler did that once and his whole mix had the dishwasher in it lol you dont remember coughing but at 3am who remembers anything I watched a Dateline last night where nobody remembered anything either and it did not end well!! Just my two cents!!

sorry about the cut off post earlier my phone does that!

lol your phone did it again, Tyler's mix had the WHAT now i have to know

but yeah, could be that. i'm pretty sure i left the vocal track armed bc i'm lazy and never disarm anything. last year i bounced a whole song with my cat yelling faintly in the chorus and kept it in. called it texture