Noise/Hiss on tracks

[polarity]

This is something I've been fighting for a while. I record a few tracks (stereo mic the guitar, vocals, DI the piano, and electronic drum kit). Start mixing and adding plugins and before I'm done the song has developed a hiss and I couldn't figure out why.

I asked some others and found the problem, thought I'd make a post in case anyone else was experiencing. Apparently lots of plugins (especially waves) have an analog button. The analog can usually be set to 50 or 60hz. This analog button basically adds hiss to mimic analog gear. There is debate online about if this button also adds some harmonics or other things, maybe one of you will know more about it but basically if you turn off analog mode, the hiss will disappear. If you are like me and have 12 different tracks using these plugins, the hiss will be horrible and you will have to disable it on each plugin. If you are smart and use more aux and busses you probably don't have this problem.

Hope it helps someone

 

[miroslav]

I initially turn it off on all my Waves plugs that have it when I'm just working up a mix.

You could wait until the actual mixdown, and then then turn it on one or two plugs if you want to add a touch, rather than using it on everything.

A little hiss goes a long way.

 

[polarity]

I don't have many waves plugins but the few I do all have the analog mode. Some of the guys singing will have me tracking, verse 3 or 4 times, then same for each chorus and verse so I end up with a lot of tracks. If I'm trying to get different sounds out of different parts I might drop some basic plugins on the tracks then use sends for overall groups (all verses go to vocal verse FX bus or something). In the end I might have 14 of the same plugin on different tracks, with that analog mode on the track just kept getting louder and louder (in terms of hiss) and I didn't know why.

Went through and turned it off on some stuff I'm been working on and almost cried I was so happy.