Suggestions to EQ out florescent lights’ buzz?

[Mark Suszko]

Izotope, Sound Soap, or Ray Gun can do this, as can several other audio editing programs. You need a couple seconds of room tone with only the buzz and nothing else, to train the software what you want to filter. Some work differently, but generally it would create an identical file exactly opposite in phase, to cancel the buzz. I also wind up using parametric EQ and notch filters.

I have also had luck going another way, using downward expansion of the specific frequency bands where the noise is. The tighter the range you try to eliminate, I think, the better, so as to do the least damage to the rest of the audio, particularly the range of human voices. When you’re trying to find that noise to kill it, the way I learned to do it is to set up the multiband EQ, and INCREASE the noisy part first, to better define the exact range. Then you invert the gain on just that frequency band and bam, it’s gone.

[John Fishback]

Mark’s suggestions are all good. But, don’t forget Soundtrack Pro which comes with FCP. It, too, can reduce the noise.

John

MacPro 8-core 2.8GHz 8 GB RAM OS 10.5.8 QT7.6.4 Kona 3 Dual Cinema 23 ATI Radeon HD 3870, 24″ TV-Logic Monitor, ATTO ExpressSAS R380 RAID Adapter, PDE enclosure with 8-drive 6TB RAID 5
FCS 3 (FCP 7.0.2, Motion 4.0.2, Comp 3.5.2, DVDSP 4.2.2, Color 1.5.2)

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[Jason Freedman]

Thanks, Mark!

[Jason Freedman]

Thanks, John!