Dumb question about hiss

YellowDwarf

YellowDwarf

Dismember
So you guys have taught me how to put a gate at the beginning and end of a song to cut out hiss and noise that is audible when I turn up the gain.

I'm going to ask for another piece of advice: how to do the same when there is an intro with a synth (for example) that comes in quietly. The noise is knocked out, but as soon as the synth comes in it is above the gate level and voila, there's the noise mixed with the synth.

Thoughts are appreciated!

Timbo
 
You could automate an eq to start with the higher frequencies rolled off, then gradually relax as the volume builds.
You hear the opposite on the fade outs on old Creedence records....I guess for the same reason? They get audibly duller as they get quieter.

Stating the obvious but make sure to trim all your silences.
Of course that's only relevant if this is accumulative hiss and you have some 'blank' tracks rolling from the start.
 
I'm lazy and use a noise reduction plugin (Waves NS1) for this sort of thing. When listening closely to what it does, it seems to provide a soft gate and EQ adjustment like Steen describes. This plugin works rather well compared to a few others I tried. For restoration, I still prefer Sony's Noise Reduction tool that I got a long time ago. It uses a capture process to undo the noise and does it quite well, without removing much/any of the fidelity.

Bottom line, though, bouldersoundguy is right - you should look into why you have the nosie in the first place. In my case, the use of noise reduction is mostly because of other people's poor tracking. Since you have control over the input, you can fix it the right way... (?)
 
I used Bias' SoundSoap in the past, and was able to de-hiss an old recording of my son singing, it did a very good job. That was a long time ago though, not sure what is comparable today.
 
I don't get why you don't wanna avoid the hiss... Such a retro synth? IMHO, all noise reduction stuff sucks a lot of the life out... If creedence did tricky fade outs, it might have been a problem of that time...

I had the impression, that every time I had too much hiss, it was an error made by me...
 
Where is the hiss coming from? Is it just the hiss on the one synth track?

If you have all the channels united, but only the one is playing, mute the extra channels until they come in, so the noise on those tracks isn't adding to it.
 
The hiss is in the mixdown, I've not isolated it but I think it happens when my mix is too quiet (peak at less than -20dB) and I have to add gain in the "mastering" stage.
 
Worth finding out, though, if it's just hiss that's present on every track or if it's hiss that's particularly strong on one track.

The former would just be the accumulative noise from your chain....the mic/preamp/environment.
The latter would be from a specific instrument or piece of hardware, specific to one (or more) tracks.

That's why Farview was saying about muting tracks that aren't doing anything.
If you're dealing with accumulative hiss, any 'silent' tracks aren't silent unless you've manually trimmed or muted them.

Also, and this is a long shot, some plugins introduce intentional hiss. Waves H-Delay is a particularly annoying example, in my opinion, but it has a control for varying degrees of 'analogness' or whatever so at least it can be turned off.
 
Okay, I get it thanks. Let me have a look. This has been a problem for me for some time, but never thought to mute everything.

Tim
 
YellowDwarf said:
Okay, I get it thanks. Let me have a look. This has been a problem for me for some time, but never thought to mute everything.

Tim
Click to expand...
That's a logical step in general- cleaning up 'heads and tails (or elsewhere). But it still leaves the same downside as gates and expanders- the noise being present during the normal sections.

If you're hearing it at noticeable levels in the mix, I go with what bouldersoundguy nailed.
Do some time tracking down the sources -the worst of them at least initially. And sort out why.
 
mixsit said:
If you're hearing it at noticeable levels in the mix
Click to expand...

Yeah, that's going to be the defining thing.
If I leave the 'silences' before my backing vocals (8+tracks) sometimes I'll be aware of the accumulated hiss, if the rest of the mix is pretty quiet,
but I'll never hear it when things are full swing.
 
That's a good point about the plugins. Waves plugins that emulate real equipment also emulate the hiss that the units make. If you see a switch labeled "analog", shut it off.

If you are in the computer, the mix bus will not have any hiss, so it has to be coming from your tracks or plugins. Find where it's coming from, and mute that until those parts come in.

Also, see if you can prevent the hiss that you are recording, before you record it.
 
I've recently used the UAD Lexicon 224 and the UAD ATR-102. In both cases noise can be switched off but it's on by default.
 
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