What Audio Interface Has Less WHITE NOISE?

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Hey guys, I've been struggling with a noticeable white noise hiss on all of my condenser mic recordings since I started with this stuff almost 2 years ago.

I'm using an M-Audio MobilePre USB and after trying my best to isolate everything, I think that has to be the problem. I once tried my whole setup but with an ooooold MOTU audio interface in place of the M-Audio, and I still got white noise, but not as much with the same gain settings.

So basically, is there any spec on the hardware of an audio interface that I can look for regarding this? I'm trying to avoid buying and shipping back one interface after another, hoping to find a good one.

I just need the most basic piece: one XLR input is pretty much all I use these for. It seems every company makes a comparable model and they're all about the same price. So what specs make the difference? When I try to compare the MobilePre to others, they don't even all use the same terms. For example, the manual states an S/N of "91, typical, A-weighted" while some others don't mention S/N at all but rather EIN. Are these the same thing? What am I really looking for?
 
Hey guys, I've been struggling with a noticeable white noise hiss on all of my condenser mic recordings since I started with this stuff almost 2 years ago.

I'm using an M-Audio MobilePre USB and after trying my best to isolate everything, I think that has to be the problem. I once tried my whole setup but with an ooooold MOTU audio interface in place of the M-Audio, and I still got white noise, but not as much with the same gain settings.

So basically, is there any spec on the hardware of an audio interface that I can look for regarding this? I'm trying to avoid buying and shipping back one interface after another, hoping to find a good one.

I just need the most basic piece: one XLR input is pretty much all I use these for. It seems every company makes a comparable model and they're all about the same price. So what specs make the difference? When I try to compare the MobilePre to others, they don't even all use the same terms. For example, the manual states an S/N of "91, typical, A-weighted" while some others don't mention S/N at all but rather EIN. Are these the same thing? What am I really looking for?

The noise floor on the Mobile Pre is crap from what I've read (-75 dB according to one Amazon review, though that might have been with it cranked all the way open, in which case it could really be as good as -115 dB, which is still pretty bad). In short, anything you pick should be an improvement. Try to find an EIN figure that's -125 dB or lower (e.g. -129 dB).

Bear in mind also that much of your noise floor may be caused by the microphone. First, there's the microphone's self noise (which is significant for some condenser mics), and second there's the amount of gain required for a given mic (which is dependent on the microphone's output level). So without knowing more about your mic hardware, this is at best a partial answer, albeit a safe answer.
 
Awesome, that's a great start. My microphone is a AT3035 and I didn't know that could figure into it. Which spec of the mic plays into this?
 
Two of them:

Self noise (a measure of the base level of noise when there's no signal)

Sensitivity (a measure of the amount of signal on the output for a given amount of sound hitting the diaphragm)

There are a few mics with lower self noise than the AT3035, but at 12 dB SPL, it's quite good. Similarly, the output level for condensers is almost always reasonably hot. If you were using a dynamic mic, I'd point to the lack of sensitivity as an issue, and if you were using any number of cheap condensers, I'd point to the self noise as an issue, but with that mic, you should be in pretty good shape.
 
Are you sure that the white noise is not a ground loop between the interface and the computer via the USB cable / audio cabling? The mic should be as quiet as a mouse.

Alan
 
I just wanted to update this with a HUGE thank you to dgatwood for his explanation. I got a Lexicon Ionix U22 which had the best EIN I could find, and it's made a world of difference. Eureka, seriously!
 
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