I have an audio track of footsteps through the woods. At one point, there's a rooster crowing in the background. To get rid of the rooster, I lowered the volume of that stretch to zero, then I cut a piece of audio with just the footsteps and put it on another track just under the zero volume stretch of the first track. Works beautifully except that there's a little pop, crackle, click, call it what you will, when the cut audio with just the footsteps is reached and when it ends. I've tried moving it left, right, a little, a lot, stretching it out to overlap with the main audio, shrinking it... nothing I seem to do works.

I also used another approach: Instead of lowering the volume of that stretch, I cut it out and replaced it with the footsteps-only snippet. No good. Still pops. So, I crossfaded it with the main audio. Still no good. Still pops.

Exhasperating. Has anyone encountered this and found a solution?

Thank you