Help with Audacity - buzzing.
 

I'm recording an EP length bit of material right now, and I've got three tracks completely recorded. I can't, however, get this stupid buzzing out of the mix. I tried "noise removal", highlighting the static with no music, and that helped a tiny bit - but when I tried to remove the noise completely, it also made my vocals sound all distorted and weird.

Is there any way to fix this? Anyone who uses Audacity know? I usually have my friend master my stuff for me, but he's out of town. :(

As smart-assed as this is going to sound, your best bet is to record without the buzz.
Depending on what frequencies the noise occupies, you may or may not have any luck trying to remove it without removing needed frequencies of other elements, as it appears has happened in your case. A clean recording is the way to go, but if it's not an option then your results may be limited, depending.

If you want, I can take a look at the vocal track and see what I can do. If the buzzing is only operating in a limited range of frequencies, it shouldn't be hard to reduce the decibel level of those frequencies without affecting the fundamental frequencies of the vocals much.
If all else fails, I have some pretty great plugins that are specific to this kind of thing anyway. :)

Thanks for the answer. Unfortunately, I couldn't get the "buzz" sound to go away - there's something wrong with the input jack. The closest thing to a solution I ended up settling for was just re-recording things as one track; the buzz was far less unbearable that way, although I still did everything I could to tweak the tracks.

I'm just going to wait for my buddy to get in town and see if he can fix the input or find a way to minimize or get rid of the buzzing altogether.

Hopefully that works for the future.

You'll have to fix the buzz before it goes into the computer.
But if that's not possible, record the buzz only and create what's called a "noisefloor".
Does Audacity support that? I don't know, if it doesn't, get Audition (it's not free, PM me...)

Yes, the best solution is to fix the jack. And if that's outside possibility, then her options are reducing the frequency domain that the buzz occupies, in the recording itself. The acceptable effectiveness of this will completely depend on the extent at which intended signals occupy that frequency range.
I'm thinking maybe you are referring to frequency cancellation, which would use two mirrored range of frequencies and invert phases, thus canceling that freq range out... which achieves the same thing as EQing a frequency range out........

Adobe Audition calls that "creating a noise floor"?
What a horrible choice of terminology.

No.
Creating a noise floor is selecting just the bit of noise you want removed (not a frequency, but the exact 'sound') and keeping that out. So it uses the sound to create a 'pattern'.
Works a lot more precize than using the EQ. It's a beautiful feature. I use it a lot to remove sounds from running computers when I try to record something :).

Sound IS frequency. The sound you're taking out will be comprised of a range of frequencies in the audible spectrum. When you completely reduce the decible level of the frequency range a sound is made of, you're removing the sound. You can achieve this either by phase cancellation of those frequencies (which is what I suspect your 'noise floor' is doing, albeit a quicker method since it bases the freq range to remove on the actual sound's freq range without you having to do any sweeps manually), or simply by reducing the decibel level of those frequencies with an equalizer.
You just described what I already said.

The problem arises when the offending sound's frequency range is shared by intended signal in a recording. Removing the frequency range, by whatever method you wish to call it, will also remove that same frequency range from the intended signal, as it's a single recording and you can't separate each element after the fact, unless you're doing mid/side processing and the intended and offending signals occupy separate spaces in the stereo field widely enough so that one can be eliminated without affecting the other.

This is all standard stuff in the audio engineering world.
I'm just trying to let the OP know that the effect needing to be achieved can be done without need for an automated process if she doesn't have access to one.

Yes, obviously. But it's not like you just pull down the band on the EQ that comes 'closest' to the sound. It's a bit more sophisticated than that. And it really works brilliantly without ****ing up the sound too much.

Haha I know, man.
Is this the effect you're talking about?
Adobe Audition 3.0

If so, you could have just said noise reduction. "Creating a noise floor" is pretty misleading, as noise floors are simply the ratio of noise to intended signal. You want to lower the noise floor, not create it. I'll just chalk this up to translation issues. :)

It is not just noise reduction. NR uses a predefined pattern, this type of noise redution uses a pattern it creates depending on the bit of noise you select. So you select the noise only, create a noise profile (that's not just a word used in audition) and remove that noise from the sound.