[Ty Ford]

Hello Oleg and welcome to the Cow Audio Forum.

One of your first lessons is that what you want doesn’t happen

Here’s why: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IaUSXP-a3hA

Why do you think you need a shotgun?

Regards,

Ty Ford
Cow Audio Forum Leader

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[Ty Ford]

Steve,

Yep. When you have cables on the floor and they are picking up something, it may be due to cables run under the floor or to iron rebar in the floor itself reradiating rf.

Regards,

Ty Ford

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[Ty Ford]

Probably enough to measure, but not enough to hear for low impedance circuits.

How long do you expect the cable to be?

Regards,

Ty Ford
Cow Audio Forum Leader

Want better production audio?: Ty Ford’s Audio Bootcamp Field Guide
Ty Ford Blog: Ty Ford’s Blog

[Ty Ford]

Hello Christopher and welcome to the Cow Audio Forum.

The conventional wisdom is that cables in which each of the two signal conductors consists of a pair of separately insulated wires that are spiraled around each other work best. This is typically referred to as some sort of Quad cable. Quad meaning four wires.

Mogami makes some. Canare makes some. Gotham’s GAC 4/1 works. I think I’ve used all three at some point.

There is an argument over whether or not to ground the shells of the XLRs. In general, studio people will ground the shield to the XLR shells, improving the shielding from external noise. Live sound folks may not because of concerns that at some point, pulling a cable from here to there may inadvertently put the shell in contact with another source of electricity which could run up the cable and harm any person or circuitry attached to the other end.

Eric Toline, who posts here, and I have done some experiments using Neutrik EMC XLR connectors. What we have found is that they may help in some situations, but are a bit tricky to solder. The in line barrel connectors sold by Markertek (and probably others) just didn’t work at all to block Apple iPhone interference.

Best practices also suggest never running power or data cables in parallel with any audio cables to prevent induced interference.

Cable length….well how strong are your arms and how much cable to you have to deploy and wrap? Most of my cable s are 25′, but I have a few 50s. 50′ cables (and longer) are obviously heavier than 25′ cables. In addition their longer length may make them more difficult to untangle. If you’re a practiced cable wrangler, go for it. I frequently use a fifty foot, six channel Whirlwind snake and stage box. The cable is very thick, given how many conductors it contains, but It’s a lot easier to roll out than six separate 50 foot runs of regular cable.

Regards,

Ty Ford
Cow Audio Forum Leader

Want better production audio?: Ty Ford’s Audio Bootcamp Field Guide
Ty Ford Blog: Ty Ford’s Blog

[Ty Ford]

Hello Jim and welcome to the Cow Audio Forum.

When/if Congress stops trying to hold the country hostage, the below web site can be used to punch in your Austin Zip Code for a report of what frequencies are best.

https://en-us.sennheiser.com/service-support/frequency-finder

Regards,

Ty Ford
Cow Audio Forum Leader

Want better production audio?: Ty Ford’s Audio Bootcamp Field Guide
Ty Ford Blog: Ty Ford’s Blog

[Ty Ford]

Cody,

Here’s the response from Izotope’s Matt HInes. It sounds a bit funky, but that may be due to the mp3 compression.

6589_codyphonebuzzedit.mp3.zip

Hi Ty,

I was asked to take a look at your audio file.

Here are some real quick tips that should set you on the right path, and a super rough edit via MP3 that will give you something to aim for, then improve upon (I didn’t tweak too heavily, the pleasure will be all yours 🙂 )

• use the time/frequency selection tool and select and area of noise that is just the buzz, approximately from 1.2kHz to 24kHz. Open Spectral Denoiser, and ‘learn’ this limited selection. Click the chain link icon under the reduction slider to delink tonal and noisy, then leave the noisy at 0 while dragging the tonal slider up as far as 35/40. increase whitening to 10. now increase the boundaries of your selection left and right to cover the whole area the buzz occurs in. process, then repeat these same steps for the other part of the buzz.

• the first instance of buzz still has periodic elements. use the same limited bandwidth selection, and process it with declick, using the ‘periodic clicks’ algorithm with an emphasis on high frequencies using that slider.

• use spectral repair’s replace to cover the two bursts of interference that are still present earlier in the audio file. don’t process the whole bandwidth of the file, again just stick to limited selections of higher frequencies.

• now you can process the entire file with dialogue denoiser to remove surface noise and the lower, resonant noise floor.

• then, a slight touch of dereverb will bring the voice more into focus.

• then, i took the unusual step of adding uniform dither noise at a much higher than average level, to reintroduce a noise floor that’s even (remember, we have chopped at this file in different areas, so it might be sounding a little filtered in certain spots). now, i learn the new noise profile, which sounds the same throughout, and masks some artifacts, and then i process to remove that entirely, leaving us with a much more even sound with a very low noise floor and no cell phone buzz. voila!

• you can apply a touch of EQ, perhaps a baxandall + lowpass filter on the high end, to enhance the sibilance that may have been slightly dulled, and also use a low mid bell to cut some of the muffled, resonant sound that still exists.

I hope those tips help. This file is definitely salvageable, I’d recommend playing around with the whitening and enhancement controls of the spectral denoiser specifically, as this will help you achieve a better result than my quick pass.

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[Ty Ford]

Jim,

This just in from Larry Fisher of Lectrosonics:

Hi Ty,
The Digital Hybrid receivers will emulate various brands and also older Lectro systems such as the 200’s. The 400 series receivers (Digital Hybrid) will work fine with the higher end Senns but not as well with the G2 G3 series, though some people report good results. If the receiver is an older 200 series, his best choice is the used Lectro market. Actually a used Lectro is always his best choice IMHO.
Best Regards,
Larry Fisher
Lectrosonics

Regards,

Ty Ford

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[Ty Ford]

Cody,

It doesn’t look like I can download that file from your site. If you can help me with that, I will try to see what I can do with RX3,

Regards,

Ty Ford
Cow Audio Forum Leader

Want better production audio?: Ty Ford’s Audio Bootcamp Field Guide
Ty Ford Blog: Ty Ford’s Blog

[Ty Ford]

Cody,

RX noise reduction in post may be able to isolate those sounds and reduce or eliminate them. I’m still a neophyte in that particular part of the software, but have seen and heard it done. In the best of cases, the noise is just GONE!

Keep cell phones Dead Off, not just on standby or vibrate only.

Eric and I have experimented with Neutrik EMC XLR connectors and have found making cables with these connectors can help. Eric can make them for you.

Distance is pretty critical. The closer you get the noise source to the mic or to the connectors at either end, the more likely it is that your gear will pick up the radiation. Just moving the cell phone 3-4 feet away MAY (or may not) solve the problem.

Now that you have identified the source and some solutions. Play with it and figure out what works and what doesn’t. As you find out more about this problem please post your results here.

Which phone is he running and on what network?

Regards,

Ty Ford
Cow Audio Forum Leader

Want better production audio?: Ty Ford’s Audio Bootcamp Field Guide
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[Ty Ford]

Hello Cody and welcome to the Cow Audio Forum.

Thanks for posting in such great detail!

I’m with Eric on this, cell phone or other broadband devices like iPads.

Were there any of these on the set?

Regards,

Ty Ford
Cow Audio Forum Leader

Want better production audio?: Ty Ford’s Audio Bootcamp Field Guide
Ty Ford Blog: Ty Ford’s Blog