Help repairing a song with IZotope RX

[Jose Hidalgo]

Hi everybody. I've been trying this for quite a long time, unsuccessfully, so here goes.

One of my favorite songs is "Lo Fang - You're the One that I Want" : https://www.deezer.com/fr/playlist/6892790764

Unfortunately, that song has a disturbing hum all along. The hum can be easily heard with any good pair of headphones.
It's really easy to hear from 0:36 to 0:41 (the hum stops briefly then starts again), but it's there most of the time.

I don't know if that hum is intentional or not.
I would hope that it's not : any decent sound engineer would have heard it and corrected it.
And if it is intentional, then I would start questioning the sound engineer's taste, because it ruins the whole song for me.

I have tried lots of things to find and repair this hum, but so far nothing has worked, so I must be doing something wrong.
I'm not an expert with IZotope RX. Usually I'm able to repair minor problems, but this one seems to be beyond me.
I wonder if somebody here would be willing to give it a spin, so we could all benefit from a repaired version of this song.
For somebody familiar enough with IZotope RX or similar tools, this should be quite easy.

I can provide a lossless FLAC file to begin with, just ask.

Thanks in advance for your help!

 

[dasdoing]

you can send the file via PM to me to try, but we can't share it in public

 

[Jose Hidalgo]

Well yes, I know, which is why I didn't share it in the first place.

 

[dasdoing]

got the file. you mean the tone that stops briefly between 0:38 and 0:39? it's the bass. can't hear nothing wrong with it. you might have a room mode at this frequency to find it anoying? if you really want to remove this, best practice would be to use (dynamic) eq. but again, this is not a defect in the music

 

[dasdoing]

you might have a room mode at this frequency

ok, you said your hear it on headphones. hmmm

 

[Jose Hidalgo]

Yes, that's exactly what I said. And having heard it lots of times, I can assure you that this is a defect in music. I wouldn't have opened a topic for this song if it wasn't.

 

[dasdoing]

I can remove it with RX de-hum
you wanna try it with my walkthrough, do this:

loop the sound before the kick in a DAW

klick learn in de-hum

take out the first, or the first two harmonics (this is actualy the organ-like synth you are hearing)

I will send you a copy with 2 harmonics removed anyways (PM), but try on your own

 

[Jose Hidalgo]

First of all, thank you so much for giving it a try! Much appreciated.

Unfortunately the issue is not solved. It's probably my fault for not being clear enough, so allow me to explain further.

That weird noise that I hear seems to be located only (or mainly) on the right channel. I guess it can be seen with RX. Take a look at this, and zoom on the picture to see what I'm talking about (it can't be seen unless you zoom in, it's a 2560 pixels wide picture) :

See the tiny horizontal orange lines ? There's definitely something weird going on in that channel. Those straight frequencies just aren't normal.
Those are probably high-pitched harmonics, so repairing them on their own doesn't solve the issue (I have tried).
the real cause must be lower in the spectrum.

Plus there's the sudden vertical gap at around 0:38. That gap doesn't exist in the left channel, and it isn't normal either IMHO.

Like I said, this really disturbs me with headphones. I welcome everybody to try it on their own and see if it disturbs them too.

 

[Jimbob54]

Like I said, this really disturbs me with headphones. I welcome everybody to try it on their own and see if it disturbs them too.

I can hear it, sounds like a bad connection hum/ buzz on on the amp of the keyboard that gives the bass swells. Seems to stop when that instrument cuts. Its annoying if listening intently but I dont think I would ever go to the effort of trying to fix a glitch in a recording.

Can only imagine it was present on whatever instrument when they tracked it and no one bothered to record again or edit it out.

 

[fieldcar]

Are you complaining about a 17.6KHz &21.5KHz tone that's about roughly -85dBfs? I have no golden ears, so I hear nothing above 16KHz. The only HUM I hear is near 50-60Hz is a layered bassline, and it's intentional.

 

[Jose Hidalgo]

I can hear it, sounds like a bad connection hum/ buzz on on the amp of the keyboard that gives the bass swells. Seems to stop when that instrument cuts. Its annoying if listening intently but I dont think I would ever go to the effort of trying to fix a glitch in a recording.

Can only imagine it was present on whatever instrument when they tracked it and no one bothered to record again or edit it out.

Yes, that's exactly what I hear too. Thank you, I feel less alone now.
I don't have golden ears or anything. I think this can be heard by anybody with decent headphones focusing on that particular part.
And yes, it definitely disturbs me enough to try and fix it, which I only have done in a small number of songs so far.

So no @fieldcar, that's not what I'm complaining about. Its frequency is much lower.
Jimbo, any ideas on the approximate frequency of that hum/buzz, so other people can understand what we're talking about? I have trouble determining it.

 

[fieldcar]

So no @fieldcar, that's not what I'm complaining about. Its frequency is much lower.
Jimbo, any ideas on the approximate frequency of that hum/buzz, so other people can understand what we're talking about? I have trouble determining it.

Ohhh. Gotcha. I do see a 60Hz tone now (lowest line on the graph). You highlighted super high frequencies, so I didn't even look at mains hum. I should be able to fix it, as there doesn't appear to be any content at that exact frequency.

 

[Jimbob54]

Ohhh. Gotcha. I do see a 60Hz tone now (lowest line on the graph). You highlighted super high frequencies, so I didn't even look at mains hum. I should be able to fix it, as there doesn't appear to be any content at that exact frequency.
View attachment 258594

@Jose Hidalgo I was just going to say it sounds around the same as a ground hum around 50/60

 

[fieldcar]

Repaired sample

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HKSGkZ_7S6BjC3SAZniR7V8gUj3uZHKZ/view?usp=sharing

The repair tool kept some of the 60Hz tone in places where there are 122Hz harmonics. Maybe it's right. Maybe not.

 

[Jose Hidalgo]

I guess we found the problem then! The funny thing is that removing an electrical hum was my first intent, a long time ago. I said to myself "this looks like an electricity hum". So I used IZotope RX's "De-hum" tool. But to my surprise it didn't correct the issue. I guess I was using it wrong. So I started thinking that it was a weird frequency hidden within the instrumental range that had nothing to do with the mains, and that such frequency was generating high order harmonics which can be seen in the spectrum. Ah, it was driving me crazy I guess. Of course I tried finding that frequency, but I was looking in the wrong places.

And yes, besides that electricity hum, there are other anomalies which I pointed out with Photoshop. Even if we can't hear those, I can't help but think that the sound engineer messed up somehow. Because none of these 3 things (electricity hum, high frequency lines all song long, and sudden gap at 0:38 or so) should be in the right channel. Especially seeing that none of them are present in the left channel.

The repair tool kept some of the 60Hz tone in places where there are 122Hz harmonics. Maybe it's right. Maybe not.

In the original, the most disturbing part is clearly between 0:36 and 0:40, so hopefully if the tool can completely get rid of that (even if that means getting rid of the harmonics too), that will take us at least 80% of the way.

 

[dasdoing]

lol there realy must be something I didn't hear. Right now I can't interrupt my listening, but I'll try to hear it in another hour

 

[dasdoing]

I can't hear what you guys are hearing, no matter what. it's just the synth.

 

[fieldcar]

I'm back to leaning toward it being intentional when listening to the isolated sound. It is more pronounced in the right channel, but it sounds synth-ish with some vabrato in the tone.

 

[fieldcar]

Here is the isolated sound

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pTJTpWoYRnSm-k2BYrweQTTW18hnqBRg/view?usp=sharing

 

[Jimbob54]

Here is the isolated sound

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pTJTpWoYRnSm-k2BYrweQTTW18hnqBRg/view?usp=sharing

Thats not the hum. That is a keyboard or at least some musical sound.