Syntrillium Backup Forums :: View topic

EVEykel · Location: USA

Ok, I know that this has been kinda discussed before on this board because I've read most of the posts, but this question is a bit different. I'm running fairly inexpensive stuff (Behringer Mixer, Presonus TubePre, Santa Cruz Soundcard, Studio Projects C1, Shure SM81, Event TR5 Actives) and I'm having an issue with hiss. Most of the stuff I'm recording consists of 5 or 6 tracks, and I usually have a noise level sitting right at around -57 or -54. It doesn't really sound too terrible to me, but I'm wondering if any of you have a rule of thumb as to what noise level is acceptable. Should I be shooting for a lower noise floor with my sources or what? It seems that whenever I adjust volume too far down to counteract noise, the signals just get too quiet. Any help you can offer would be greatly appreciated.

ozpeter · Location: Australia

You might need to work out what hiss is coming from where and under what circumstances. There's been a previous thread where forum members posted the noise levels from their soundcards with no inputs. Once you've established that figure for your own, try introducing the noise from the master fader of your mixer, then from each track with line or mic sensitivity set up, and so forth - see if there is something you should avoid. Try putting a pillow over your mic to see what hiss it's putting out with (hopefully) no sound reaching it. And so forth. Maybe search the forum for 'gain staging' (or is it 'stageing'?!).

- Ozpeter

SteveG · Location: United Kingdom

I'd say that 'gain staging' has probably got a lot to do with this, especially if the hiss appears to build up over successive acoustic tracks. You need to get the best signal to noise ratio you can at the mic preamp, to make sure that you get the maximum signal you can from it without it clipping. If you don't do this, you find that you have to make up the levels elsewhere, and this amounts to compensating for an already degraded signal by adding a bit more degradation to it - not an ideal state of affairs! Turning down the volume doesn't affect the signal to noise ratio at all - but the gain control on your mixer or preamp often does - as does correct mic technique.

It is inevitable that as you add more tracks, that the noise will build up, but with care, it shouldn't build up too much. You have to remember that the track with the highest noise floor is the one that will determine the noise floor of your final track, unless that track is placed well back in the mix.

So it's worth considering the state of each separate track. If you have a constant level of hiss on them, then noise-reducing individual tracks by a sensible amount may make a big difference to the overall result, and doing it this way will reduce the chances of artefacts quite a bit. And this way, you may be able to reduce the noise floor on tracks you've already recorded.

But bear in mind that the right place to avoid this is at recording time - it's much easier to fix a problem that isn't there!