get rid of a humming in an old vcr recording

[ahs]

i have an old vcr recording and a humming sound at 160 Hz. i tried very much with eq and so but i lost almost the bass tone.
any ideas ?

[WongoTheSane]

It's not at 160Hz, but at 50, 100, 150, 200, 250 and so on. Here is the frequency analysis of your file:



So it was probably recorded in Europe (if it were recorded in the States the hum would be at 60, 120, 180, 240, etc). There are two methods that I can see:

1) add as many notch filters as necessary, one for each multiple of 50 (actually, there's also a small pike at 25, but you should probably high pass everything anyway), carefully setting the Q and gain reduction for each of these bands.

2) try and find a bit of the tape that has the hum but no other sound on it (after a fade to black, for instance, if it's a movie, or during the credits, or the FBI warning ). Sample it (you'll need several seconds), load up the file (containing both the recording you posted and the few seconds of hum) in Audacity and use the "Noise Removal" option (the method is explained in the dialog box that shows up when selecting the "Noise Removal" option).

Be aware that none of these methods will yield a "clean" sound like we're used to nowadays. At best, you'll hear the hum a bit less, at the cost of slightly altering the rest of the sound. The second one will be orders of magnitude faster though.

Finally, you might also try through spectral editing (http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/Spectral_Selection), although I suspect this is better suited when the unwanted frequency has no harmonics (which is unfortunately your case) and a very narrow Q, but I haven't tried.

[ravisoni]

I don't know how much of the low end you were willing to sacrifice, but shelving at around 180 Hz and then cutting some harmonics gets what I'm attaching here. See if it works for you.

[plaamook]

Can't recommend iZotope RX highly enough. Even the light version (which is probably all you'd need) slamms. Best I've seen.

[jappe]

i have an old vcr recording and a humming sound at 160 Hz. i tried very much with eq and so but i lost almost the bass tone.
any ideas ?

Hello,

there you go:
https://instaud.io/jQ5

Like Wongo said its 50Hz & overtones.

I used Adobe Audition v 1.5 spectral editing to fix it - I haven't tried the Audacity spectral editing but that'd prob work just as fine (I think!?)

So, spectral mode, zoom out maximally horizontally and zoom in around 100 Hz interval vertically to get the precision, then just drag the rect to mark whats going to be cut, cut with Delete button; nice and simple.
I removed all humming overtone up to 600 Hz, thinking the other ones are masked.
However, recovering from flu with really crappy hearing atm so my flu filter could have tricked me here.

There's also some "kill the rumble" filter patch which I haven't tried, perhaps that'd yield a better result.

Snapshot from the AA spectral view after removal, and you can see traces of overtones I didn't touch from 650HZ and up
Dark equals silence.


EDIT: Your recordings seem already low&high pass filtered. I guess you don't have the raw recordings?

[ahs]

thanks to all answers !!!
i have to read the answers and try things out.
i'll give u an update.

thanks again

[ahs]

and now i don't have the raw recordings. it is an old documention from YT (xenakis) and the humm is very boring

[TheMiles]

If you have a clear sample of the hum without any other noises you could try the "remove noise" Feature of Audacity. You need first feed the clear hum into the removal tool and then remove it. Works OK with regular noise, just give it a try

[ahs]

i am going to have the reduction only in Reason. i am using a mclass equalizer and the PEQ 2 but i can notch up and down as crazy the bass humm stays !?

[ahs]

i tried the "remove noise" feature but the overall sound is going to be no having bass evermore

[ScuzzyEye]

i am going to have the reduction only in Reason. i am using a mclass equalizer and the PEQ 2 but i can notch up and down as crazy the bass humm stays !?

There are some things that are not well suited for real-time processing, but are dog simple with a spectral editor. This type of noise removal is exactly where the latter excels.

[jappe]

i tried the "remove noise" feature but the overall sound is going to be no having bass evermore

Right.
Did you find my cleanup attempt insufficient?
Just to be sure you didn't miss it in my post: You can download it here:
https://instaud.io/jQ5

[ahs]

you clearing is good but the vid is 50 min long and i don't have audition

i assume that you have to fiddle with every piece in the vid, or ?

[ahs]

i am trying to get close in reason only (maybe it works someday)

[jappe]

you clearing is good but the vid is 50 min long and i don't have audition

i assume that you have to fiddle with every piece in the vid, or ?

ah ok,

Well I haven't edited 50 minutes long audio before, but unless there's some limitation in Audition it wouldn't take long time to fix.
If you want to provide the whole audio track I could try it.

[ahs]

thanks for helping out. i am on RE wich can help me. i let u know how it works.

cheers