Hi, guys. All these suggestions are great and getting my thinking bone in gear. I'm on a tight (well... non existent ATM) budget but some of these things I have access to in one form or the other and I am always trying to figure out the most effective purchases for when a little money does trickle in.
 
Anyhoo... I had semi forgotten about the hum removal presets in Sonitus EQ (50 and 60 hz). I did some test tracking and the 60 hz set up removes a good hunk of the annoyance (mostly the lower rumble/buzz) but not all. Good start and it doesn't seem to affect the tone in any way which is great. R-Mix did however eliminate all of it without affecting the tone too much either but there is a bit of an odd "sparkling" kind of sound when the NR/Hum is cranked so perhaps giving the tracks a pass with Sonitus first then applying R-Mix a little more lightly could be a good combo solution.
 
A big part of the problem is a really need some sustain on these tracks. It is VERY high register work far up on the fretboard and I'm going line out from the heads. I can't crank and mic for sustain (apartment with thin walls and freaky neighbors). Even if I was micing both of my amps are solid state so the sustain wouldn't be great anyway and with no proper iso booth/boxes would likely be even noisier.
 
What I'm think of doing to get the sustain on the crucial notes without having to worry about hum creep on the decay is simply using time stretching/Audiosnap to drag out the few notes I need to stay strong. I hate doing that because a) it's "cheating" IMO and b) there is vibrato involved for the feel so I will have to anticipate how it is going to sound after the stretch (which means I'll need to do any left hand/tremo bar vibrato faster than normal during the performance to compensate for the stretch).
 
Just talking out "loud". Helps me think and maybe you guys can kick up a few more ideas/suggestions/anecdotes based on the current experiment.
 
Aside from that, if all goes according to plan this summer, I may have another (very) small influx of money coming in a few months. Most is already earmarked for things I needed last year but I think some of these input noise issues may need to take precedence. I've been wanting to get some decent DI boxes for both my electric guit and my bass. I was going to try for the MOTU Z-Box (and may still go that route) but I've seen nicer units dedicated to specific purposes. Alternatively (or in conjunction with DI devices/splitters) I might see if there is ANYTHING that can be done to my axes to get the noise down a bit. I need some other work done on them and I'd like to get my Ibanez out of retirement so maybe there is some onboard grounding solutions that have come out in recent years.
 
I will check out Audition... I think I have an old copy of CS around here somewhere and have been meaning to check out some of the other stuff it can do for me.
 
Geoff... how are ya, bud? Do you happen to have a link to Bit's article? And yes... I really need to stop dragging my arse on installing the free Melda stuff and checking out their paid offerrings. I'm contemplating the best approach to setting my DAW up for the best performance so I've been holding of on a lot of things until I figure out whether I want to just clean up the current build or start from scratch with a clean install. Just wanna finish this project and my personal project before I focus on that.
 
Thanks, all. Cheers.

I wanted to double back on what caught me with the OP. I just checked this and R-Mix is working fine for me in SPlat. I dug up a few old projects and also added it to a few new ones. You may be able to reinstall from X2 (and may need to then reinstall SPlat over it) to correct it. Something just seems "amiss" about it not working for you (not sure why). Bringing R-Mix back online would be the first "solution." Not sure if this is a resource issue or R-Mix itself.
 
Another option for you would be to comp the track and bounce it so you have only one wav file to play with (blow off the noise completely and leave a half second of "only hum" somewhere). I set up dropbox to help out Dub with his mastering, so you can upload that and shoot me a PM if you want me to take a quick pass on it.
 
My concern for you is that if a gate alone will not cut it that you are causing yourself more grief by trying filters with "set parameters," which do not take into account the distribution of that noise. Tools that capture a noise print and then process removal of that print work best with changing environments.
 
Out of curiosity, are others reading this thread having issues with R-Mix loading in SPlat?
 
 

Thanks for the clarification. The tracking part makes a lot more sense. I have been snared by the pitfall of wanting the tracking to sound like the final mix as well, but it can have associated frustrations. As long as you are capturing 24 bit there is a lot of tolerance in the mixing itself.
 
Another tracking alternative would be to direct monitor to a physical amp. That may not give "final mix" results, but would at least remove the overhead of FX while tracking for you. Can save attacking the noise issue for when latency is not a concern.
 
Something else to play with regarding the noise is orientation of the guitar to sources (if not already tried). I rarely use single coils because they are finicky this way, but being perpendicular to the closest sources makes them tolerable at times.

http://soundbytesmag.net/meldamdynamiceqpart1/
 
http://soundbytesmag.net/spectraldynamicsdynamiceq/
 
Bapu agrees with bit that spectraldynamics is really helpful.
 
I add my voice to that chorus. I've used it quite a lot since buying it for a number of things.

Beepster

benjaminfrog
As an alternative, Reaper's freeware plugin bundle, ReaPlugs, includes ReaFIR, which can be used to capture noise profiles and subtract the noise from your audio. 
 
http://www.reaper.fm/reaplugs/

 
Hi, Ben. Does it work better than Audacity's noise removal?

Hi, Beep. Unfortunately, I don't know. I use RX and just mentioned ReaFIR, because I knew it had that feature and that you were hoping to keep costs down. Sounds like (from a subsequent post) you're gonna give Audition a go. Hope you get some tasty results.

If I read the OP correctly, you added two instances of RMix (one to each track)? If you're trying to get rid of the same hum on both tracks, you might try creating a bus with RMix and sending your tracks through that... one instance of RMix running instead of two. I know this sounds simplistic and I may be missing something, but it's what I would try.  I LOVE RMix and would hate to lose it when I upgrade to Platinum...
 
Best,
Rob

mettelus
Out of curiosity, are others reading this thread having issues with R-Mix loading in SPlat?

The SPlat plugin manager rejects RMix at the scan stage for me. Can't enable it at all.

I don't use it much but in my routine test of all plugins once Splat was installed I didn't have any problems with scanning it, loading it in an fx bin or using it. Sorry I can't replicate your problem beeps.

You're very welcome Robert. 

jbow
Having to go to an earlier version of Sonar to reduce noise seem strange to me? Why? I am obviously missing something, is it using R-Mix in Platinum that requires this work around or general high gain hiss? I know using compression and distortion can be tricky noisewise. IDK.. enlighten me.

Hi Jbow...

I believe Beepster was using R-Mix to remove noise... It does pretty good at this but he's having trouble running it in SPlat...

It would only be a matter of time till I run into this as well for I have used it this way to... At the moment it's the best noise removal tool some of us have...

Keni

Beepster
I'm currently tracking but there are quite a few posts I'd like to respond to and I've done some research so have some thoughts for this thread and Craig's mastering thread but I just wanted to quickly address your post, rcees.
 
First of... hiya. :-) Using R-Mix on the bus would, in theory, make sense but what I'm actually trying to do is yank out the hum before it hits the sims on the tracks (the sims are in the FX bins of each track). It's weird because the dry guitar signal actually has no apparent noise on them but once they hit the sims they do. Putting R-Mix (and/or Sonitus set to the 60 hum removal preset) after the sim on the track though is not as effective as having it before the sim. I'm basically stopping whatever is triggering the hum within the sim BEFORE it hits the sim. Kind of like I'm grounding my guitar before going in to an amp/stompbox if this were a hardware setup. Putting it on the bus would obviously not work for this and I like to have the sims on the individual tracks so I can set them up different to be complimentary to each other (two inputs with different tones so different effects custom tweaked).
 
Also the bus is actually being fed by three sets of two tracks (there are harmonies and doubles so 2x3 = 6 tracks). Getting rid of the noise on the tracks seems like the best course of action.
 
Just wanted to explain what was going on. However I have gone for a different approach where I am using a blend of the two channels on the amp but I also realized this morning that even when I use the channel blending option that that signal blends into the first of the two dual outputs BUT the second channel still gets output through the second output (without the first channel's signal). This means I have a less powerful output on that channel but it is still something extra I may be able to use to beef things up or pan or do mid side or whatever.
 
I could actually take all this even further and split the guit signal using my TU-2 pedal and send into my other amp as well to create three signals but I don't think that is necessary and splitting in this manner unfortunately seems to introduce a bit of extra noise from the pedal (or bad cables or interference or whatever).
 
Anyway... thanks all for contributing. As always it has gotten me thinking about some important stuff. Today is all about tracking though so my apologies if I don't return right away.
 
Cheers.

I tend to clean any problems in an audio track then render it out (bounce) so that I'm working with clean audio files to begin with. It makes any following fx much easier to set up.