High-pitched TV Whine

[TallyHo]

Hi. . .

Some cable channels have a noticeable high-pitched whine to the audio, even though the video is fine. You know, like the way you can hear a TV even if it is on and muted. It's tolerable during live TV, but for recordings it's horrible, to the point that I'd rather not watch what I've recorded.

I can work with the audio track if I ahve to (I have Cool Edit Pro), I just don't know what filters to apply, or wahtever else needs to be done. Any ideas? I've played around some, but I can't find anything I can do. . .

Thanks

[Anonymous65]

My guess is that you're picking up the horizontal scan frequency of a TV set. This can happen when you run audio cables close to a TV set, or use unshielded audio cables. It can also happen if you use very low audio levels close to a TV set (like mic levels or using a mic input).
Make sure to run all audio cables as far away from the TV set as you can, even turn it off to see if the audio interference comes from the TV. Otherwise, it is broadcasted that way on your cable or satellite system.

To remove the audio, use a lowpass filter or a high frequency notch filter (around 15Khz). Most wave editors have this.

http://steve.kittelsen.com

[vh5150]

I had a problem similar to that when after I did a capture. What I had seemed like a high pitched noise similar to the 19khz pilot tone in FM.

I thought it was because of the RF cable connection to the VCR so I disconnected that but left the RCA cables connected to the capture card. Then the noise was gone. I even noticed the change when I repeated this in capture mode in Virtualdub.

So to elaborate on what skittelsen said, If I were you I would invest in some quality RCA cables and not those that came with your VCR. Something like Monster Cable Interlink 100 are like $10 a pair for 6 meter and they have a super video cable too. Pretty much anything with a shield embedded in it is good. BUT keep cable runs short. Resistance is your enemy (not futile).

Also a good ground to both your tv and vcr would help as well as your pc. Because a ground loop can also make things bad too if you want to capture.