Solving ABC's High Pitched Noise
(This post is about the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Digital Channels. It may not effect analogue TV)
As some of you know, I suffer from New Daily Persistant Headaches, which leaves me fairly sensative to high pitched noises.
ABC's (and to a lesser extent Ten) self producted material - that is things like News, The Chaser, The Glasshouse (while it was on) seem to be recorded and broadcast with a very high frequency noise in the background.
For normal people, this isn't an issue. For me, however, it makes it impossible to watch the ABC - in particular, the Chaser's War On Everything.
Info
- It effects all SD and HD broadcasts - on TV's and TV Tuner cards
- I know several other people (other states) who can also hear it
- SD/HDTV rips (XVid/DivX) of it also contain the noise
- It does not effect the Vodcast. Mind you, the vodcast has horrible sound as it is ;)
Solution
I had a few people suggest playing with the equaliser (EQ). Thats great for reducing the volume that its produced…but thats about it. The noise is still being produced, and is still very painful to me.
The solution I've settled on (for now) involved FFDShow.
FFDShow comes with a FIR Filter (Finite impulse response filter), which lets you cut off (as in "set to zero") everything above a certain frequency.
The settings I'm using are:
Number of taps: 8
Type: Lowpass
Frequency: 10000
Window: Box
Now, there is a downside to this - cutting off frequencies reduces the quality of output. The settings I'm using reduces it very minimally (I'm happy to leave it on), but cuts the noise out completely, so for me, its a no-brainer. For others, this may not be the case.