Online Tool Store
· 4 min read
How to Make an Audio Loop With No Click
Manesh Jayawardhana
CIO & Co-founder
Background music for a game level, ambience under a video, hold music on a phone system. The clip sounds fine once. On the second repeat there’s a tick at the seam, and once you’ve heard it you hear nothing else.
That click has a precise cause and two fixes, and they solve different halves of the problem.
Why loops click
Audio is a sequence of amplitude values. At the loop point, playback jumps from the last sample of the clip straight to the first.
If those two samples are at different amplitudes, the waveform steps discontinuously — and a step in a waveform is, physically, a click. The bigger the gap between end and start, the louder it is.
The fix is to make both edges land where the waveform crosses zero. A zero crossing is the moment the amplitude passes through silence on its way between positive and negative. Snap both loop points there and the end and start amplitudes match, so there’s no step.
That handles the physics. It doesn’t handle the second problem: musical timing.
The other half: the loop has to land musically
A seam can be technically clean and still sound wrong. If the loop point falls in the middle of a bar, the ear — which is tracking rhythm, not waveforms — hears the beat stumble.
For music, the loop length needs to be a whole number of bars at the tempo. A 32-bar loop at 120 BPM is 64 seconds; anything that isn’t a bar multiple will feel wrong however clean the waveform is.
For ambience with no rhythm — rain, wind, room tone — this doesn’t apply, which is why ambience is far easier to loop than music.
Where crossfades come in
A crossfade overlaps the end of the clip with its beginning, so instead of a hard join there’s a short blend. It hides seams that zero-crossing snapping can’t fix, particularly when the material either side of the loop point is different in character.
The trade-off is smearing. A long crossfade over percussive material blurs transients, so the drum hit at the loop point loses its attack. Between 100 and 300 milliseconds suits most music; less for anything percussive.
| Problem | Fix |
|---|---|
| Click at the seam | Zero-crossing snapping |
| Seam audible but not clicking | Crossfade, 100-300 ms |
| Rhythm stumbles | Loop length must be a whole bar count |
| Transients smeared | Shorten the crossfade |
Common mistakes to avoid
- Fixing the click with a long crossfade when zero-crossing snapping would have solved it cleanly.
- Looping music on a length that isn’t a bar multiple.
- Testing the loop once — the seam is only obvious on the second and third repeat.
- Applying a fade-in and fade-out instead of a crossfade, which produces an audible dip at every loop.
- Exporting to a lossy format after looping, since compression can reintroduce artefacts at the seam.
How to do it with Audio Loop Maker
The Audio Loop Maker handles both halves in the browser, with the file staying on your device.
- Load the audio and set rough loop points around a musically sensible section.
- Snap both edges to zero crossings.
- Add a short crossfade if the seam is still audible — start at 100 ms.
- Listen to at least three repeats before exporting.
Other browser-only audio tools are in the tools directory.
Frequently asked questions
Why does my loop click?
Because the end and start samples are at different amplitudes, so the waveform steps. Snapping both to a zero crossing removes the click; a crossfade covers what snapping can’t.
How long should the crossfade be?
Long enough to hide the seam, short enough not to blur the material — 100 to 300 ms suits most music, less for percussive content where the fade smears transients.
Does the loop need to be musically timed?
For music, yes. A seam that’s technically clean but lands mid-bar still sounds wrong, because the ear tracks the rhythm rather than the waveform.
Final thought
Snap first, crossfade second, and always listen to three repeats. A loop that sounds perfect once is a loop you haven’t tested.