putting a noise reduction unit on headphone amp?

E

earworm

New member
hi there,
what me and the bands always notice is ...hiss in the headphones,
not extreme noise, but some people REALLY like it loud
and of course that brings hiss with it,
my mixer is an old studiomaster, i like it but will sell it this year,
the HP amp is very nice (oz audio qmix6)

there's an FX send and return on the HP amp,
just imagine, would it be stupid to put a noise reduction there?
ok, ok, i know, this machine should be used as an insert,
or before the HP amp,
but what are your comments on this?
^plane stupid? i'm open for all comments .

and if there's anyone who'd say its not a bad idea to go for some noise reduction, what kind of units would u suggest?
i know dbx started making them centuries ago,
saw some symetrix ones

and i BET behringer's got it too , but i'll pass on that

its just that some bands are really demanding, even though i'm doing underground stuff, they want it all to sound so nice during tracking...

cheers,
moi
 
There are a couple of common places where headphones pick up noise from. Since you have an old studiomaster (not a bad little board really), it could be the source. A lot of smaller cheaper consoles (especially older ones) have noisy aux sends.

Try putting on some headphones with no signal going to them. Does the hiss increase when you turn up aux sends? Especially pay attention to where the gain settings on channels are when you are doing this. There is a good chance that the preamps are also noisy, so all it would take is maybe one channel that has a lot of gain on it and going to the headphones to really increase the noise.

Also, cheaper headphone amps tend to do the same thing. The more you turn them up (even without sending signal down the line) the more of the actual headphone amp you hear. The OZ audio should be better than all the Behringer, Samson, Rolls, ART, etc.... heapdphone amps as far as this goes, but pretty much any headphone amp will make some noise when you start opening the amp up a lot. Often times people don't notice this noise when they are listening to a mixdown on headphones because the average levels are often so much hotter that they aren't pushing the amp nearly as much. It's the same principle as hiss in speakers. The higher gain the amp is at, the more self noise it will kick out. Cheaper amps tend to make more, more expensive amps tend to make less.

As far as a Behringer noise reduction unit goes.... I have not seen anything about one. Noise reduction is sort of an EQ of sorts. The dolby ones are designed to help to nullify certain types of noise typically associated with the different types of tape machines and I/O circuits. They can be handy, but unless you spend the good money, they can also be fairly audible which may solve one problem and introduce a different one at the same time. Now if Behringer did make a noise reduction unit, my bet is that it would be a real waste of money. In just about every piece of Behringer gear I have heard, there seems to be a fairly constant amount of noise, or hiss, associated with it. If they had a noise reduction unit, your sound would go into it, the hiss would be reduced by whatever circuitry and algortihm it uses to do that, but most likely be reproduced on the way out due to their cheapy shoddy materials and designs:D
 
very interesting,
indeed, the WORST noise i got is from the aux sends !
at first i thought..hell, my little lexicon alex is making noise !
but its the insert sends and returns, the noisiest part of my mixer,
the pre-amps are OK, nothing more than just ok,
the OZaudio hpamp is pretty silent on itsself, i often turn the volume 100% open with no signal, and the hissing is still prety low,
with my mixer connected of course i get more hiss,
and honestly , here and there i still got an unbalanced cable going to the HP amp....money issues :p

once again true, using a cheap noise reducer might be stupid, its like quitting smoking weed and starting drinking liters of alcohol instead ;)

in my case i want some absynth then,
a new mixer :)
M8 or 12 it will be... if the Direct outs are After EQ and after Inserts that is...
 
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