Get Less Noise In Your Recordings!

M

Mr Nice

New member
I thought I would post this up for this site. It would be cool if it became a sticky. :cool: My studio houses both balanced and unbalanced cables and I dont get excessive noise (if any) in my recordings. I happen to make sure of 4 things.

1. Separate your audio cables from your electrical cables.

2. Make sure the polarity for audio and electrical cables are the same on each end.

3. Make sure your equipment is well grounded. Make sure the house is well grounded also.

4. Keep the volume on your source instruments a little under max when you record. If the signal is too low use the gains on the mixing board.


Follow these simple steps and your recordings can possibly be a bit cleaner.

NOTE: These tips will not work if you have a cheap sound card that will inevitably produce noise.
 
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You guys have to be kidding me? :D

Polarity means a state either positive or negative with reference to the two poles. Did you ever see speaker wire, and one side has a "white line" or mark on it. That was to ensure that you dont hook up the negative to positive on a speaker system. By incorrectly hooking up speaker wires your speakers can play "out of phase". That means the woofer instead of pushing outward on sound, will draw inward. Now that wont cause noise (hum, hiss) but it can tend to sound unpleasant. Also on electrical cords you will notice that some prongs are bigger than the other. That is to assure you connect the device to the "hot" or "neutral" side of the AC circuit.

Hope this explains it.
 
noisedude said:
Do you mean I can only connect my PA speakers one way round? I'm sure I would've noticed by now ... :eek:
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If your PA speakers utilize XLR cables you would have to be a real moron to get it backwards especially since the connector only goes in one way. I was talking about if your speakers are wired using, lets say 12AWG speaker wire, you could very easily reverse the polarity! :D
 
I was messing with the phase on some stereo speakers a while back. I bypassed the cheap pseudo-crossover in em and cut the ends off some rca cables to make an rca to stripped wire cable, to plug em in to the reciever. Just some old crap I bought for 8 bucks total at a garage sale.

Putting them in and out of phase with each other (swapping the wires on one back and forth) has some interesting effects on the imaging and wideness.



But still, I dont see how audio wires and electrical wires can have the same polarity or different polarity.... I mean you could have two wires next to each other with currents going the same way, or the opposite way, but that would change not only with which wires are next to each other, but every time the ac cycle changes.
 
Mr Nice said:
2. Make sure the polarity for audio and electrical cables are the same.
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This statement is entirely different than saying "ensure your speaker's polarity is setup properly" and "make sure polarized electrical plugs are plugged in correctly."

The way you said it the first time made it sound as if there was some sort of bizarre correlation between the polarity of audio signals and the polarity of the electrical wiring - which is why some of us were questioning it.
 
Blue Bear Sound said:
This statement is entirely different than saying "ensure your speaker's polarity is setup properly" and "make sure polarized electrical plugs are plugged in correctly."
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How is that entirely different? I said make sure the polarity is the same, meaning negative to negative and positive to postive.

The way you said it the first time made it sound as if there was some sort of bizarre correlation between the polarity of audio signals and the polarity of the electrical wiring - which is why some of us were questioning it.
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I revised what I originally said, I changed it to "make sure the polarity is the same on both ends." I dont know how you came to think that I meant it as a bizarre correlation between electric and audio cables? :confused:

I only said it as if the polarity is off it may interfere with your recordings, I apologize for any misunderstanding here, Its not like I have time to proof-read what I type 50 times before hitting the "Submit Reply" button.
 
Mr Nice said:
1. Separate your audio cables from your electrical cables.

2. Make sure the polarity for audio and electrical cables are the same on each end.

3. Make sure your equipment is well grounded. Make sure the house is well grounded also.

4. Keep the volume on your source instruments a little under max when you record. If the signal is too low use the gains on the mixing board.
Click to expand...


Yea. And turn off your air conditioner, humidifier, heater, and television, too. :D
 
take the house pets to a kennel.....the air pump on the fish tank could be a problem....put up road blocks at all the streets around your neighborhood so you dont hear the sound of cars passing...and seeing as how birds fly south for the winter most of the time...its been a little quieter in terms of random chirping
 
Vocal booths are an invention by the Illuminati to give us the false impression that a little noise is natural, so we'll effectively "Stop listening" to those conversations that go on behind closed doors.
 
Yea. And turn off your air conditioner, humidifier, heater, and television, too
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.....the air pump on the fish tank could be a problem....
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Dudes, that is not even funny :eek:

Here is a scratch track/sketch for a new tune ('Sunset traffic'):

http://www.nowhereradio.com/teainthesahara/singles

...that background hum and bubbling sound is what happens when you neglect to unplug the fridge and fish tank air pump. Freakin fish. I dig em, bu I have to record in 30 minute bouts so they can breath!
 
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