Tape Noise

[Stinky]

I've been trying to record for about a year. I get A LOT of tape noise and am looking for ways to reduce it. I have mid-line Vestax four tracker and record everything direct via a few SM57s, a Zoom 1010 and a few other guitar pedals. I know the pedals are noisy, but it's tape noise I'm trying to contend with. What about de-magnatizing my heads if needed? An external pre-amp? Some sort of phantom power thingy to increase the signal going into the machine? I know it's never going to sound great (or even really good), but I would like to know what my options are as I learn how to do this stuff. Thanks a lot and keep on rockin'!!!!

[El Barto]

Do you clean the heads? Do you demagnetize them? This is #1, you must always do this. Do you have any type of noise reduction such as DBX? If so, turn that on. If the unit is old and hasn't been taken care of, it's most likely dirty inside and that can cause extra noise. You may just want to look into getting a new 4 track, such as a Tascam 414 or 424MKIII.

[T.J.Hooker]

Hi Stinky! What kind of tapes are you using ? I'm assuming your 4 track is a cassette machine. When I was using a tascam 4 tracker I got alot of noise. I started using "High Biased type II" tapes and noticed quite a difference. Maybe you do use these tapes, as there is always some noise with these machines, but I noticed a big difference hope that helps.
Good luck brother, T.

[John Sayers]

Stinky - sound like the machine needs a good clean and demag. Get some cotton buds and a bottle of isopropyl alcohol from your drug store or what ever you call it over there. Remove to cover over the cassette drive and get in there and clean and polish everything. Then get a demagnetiser from your local shack and follow the instructions and demag your machine. If that doesn't work try El Barto's suggestion.
Cheers
John

[bvaleria]

Cleaning and demagnetizing are all good things to do regularly anyways, but poor maintenance would not be the source of the tape hiss if it's as extreme as you describe it.

It sounds like one or more of 3 things (some of which have already been mentioned)-
a) you aren't using noise reduction (DBX or Dolby); and on a cassette multi-track you ABSOLUTELY MUST use noise reduction to get any sort of reasonable recorded signal with good signal-to-noise;
b) you may be recording signals at too low a level, again resulting in poor s/n ratio. Don't be afraid to get those meters up (but not too much!);
c) I don't believe any cassette multi-tracker is calibrated to use any tape other than Chrome or Type II cassettes - Type I or Normal tape will unquestionably give you poor results even if the machine were calibrated for them, but using Normal tape in a machine calibrated for Type II will definitely give you big-time noise problems.

Bruce Valeriani
Blue Bear Sound

PS, John -- checked out your site... nice! Impressive credentials too!!

[Edited by bvaleria on 10-29-2000 at 01:13]