removing ground loop hum from a recording

bip · Post by **bip** » Wed Mar 19, 2008 11:55 am

hi,
i've made a live recording of a track that i'm unable to do again.
unfortunately, i have recorded the whole thing on the soundcard of my second laptop and this suffered of a light ground loop noise.
is is possible to remove it from the final file?
i've already tried with noise reduction plugins (with very bad results)
and also to retreive the frequencies on an analyzer and dig a hole with a parametric eq, also useless.
do anyone have an idea other that throwing the file away?
it was one of my best tracks

thanks in advance

hydrogen · Post by **hydrogen** » Wed Mar 19, 2008 1:56 pm

Don't sweat it...

put that track away... and try recording some more!

you can just listen to that old one any time for a bit of inspiration!

bip · Post by **bip** » Mon Jul 27, 2009 11:16 am

more than one year later... i just listened to the track and really can't manage to make something similar, it was all hardware imporovisation and some pieces of gear are now away.
do you think that an engineer can make something?
sending the track could give acceptable result?

Robot Criminal · Post by **Robot Criminal** » Mon Jul 27, 2009 11:44 am

If u can record the exact hum u can phase reverse it and add to the track but I guess this would b quite impossible to reproduce?

Just a wild guess...

kylemcsparron · Post by **kylemcsparron** » Tue Jul 28, 2009 3:51 am

If your not too worried about people getting hold of the file or anything you could always upload it to get some better opinions or perhaps someone on here may be able to perform some open loop surgery?

foo · Post by **foo** » Tue Jul 28, 2009 6:30 pm

you may send the track to me, and i'd have a go at it if you want.

but I don't want to get your hopes up, cause the possibility is very little that the hum can be removed without changing some other frequencies, and phase reversing also won't work imo.

on a short note, I think you are unlucky and will have to go for a newer and better track

MINIMALTECHNOHOUSE · Post by **MINIMALTECHNOHOUSE** » Tue Jul 28, 2009 7:44 pm

Its gonna be a tiny freq range, have you even tried a simple eq cut?

Atheory · Post by **Atheory** » Tue Jul 28, 2009 10:01 pm

if its classic ground loop frequency a cut between 50 and 60hz should do it.
but i think, and i could be way off, other equipment like computers etc might have a different range, plus other room ambience if you used mics. and there's harmonics to think about, so it depends on how loud the origianl one buzz was i suppose.....

maybe send the file to someone capable...