"Hiss" noise on vocal recording

J

johanbudiman

New member
Dear all,

I have following gears for my vocal home recording and also the settings:
- Focusrite scarlet 8i6 ( setting up the gain to 9 or almost maximum)
- Samson C01 condenser mic and pop filter 6" away (plugged in to the 1st channel of Focusrite 8i6)
- Klotz XLR to XLR cable for microphone (3m.. replacing the old one "Canare")
- Izotope music & speech cleaner (software)
- Audacity (software)

i am facing a problem during every recording to my PC, there are alot of "hiss" noise. i want to get rid of it without depending on "izotope MS cleaner", is there any solution ?...
because i have to cleanup my vocals twice with izotope (first 10dB and then second 5dB)...and i already change the XLR cables but no improvements....

NB: attached the front view of Focusrite 8i6
Scarlett8i6_Front.jpg

I really apprecieate any helpful answer....:)
 
Are you singing into the front of the mic?

You shouldn't have to turn the gain up that high.
 
not really in front of mic...but a little bit off axis below, total distance from mic 15"......but it is an easy type singing, red "clipping" never reached....but if I turn down the gain....the post recording is terrible...i have to compensate noise with the gain...
 
Get closer to the mic. Sound works on an inverse-square relationship. If you are 7-1/2" from the mic instead of 15 inches you will sound 6dB louder as far as the mic is concerned.

Your vocal should be peaking between -18dBFS and -12dBFS.

No need to track higher than that.

Also, check your settings on the software mixer that comes with the Scarlett and Audacity. Something is turned down too low. Set all those faders to unity i.e. "0" and adjust the gain of the mic with the Scarlett input gain knob.

Also, do you have the same problem when using the other input of the Scarlett?

What does "the post recording is terrible" mean?
 
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yes it is very low..and when i increase the amplitude using audacity or izotope, the "hiss" is increasing also, although it can be cleaned very well with izotope...., i have tried any different mic position....but the thing is i don't want to have a lot of work cleaning up the noise...

and volume control already played a lot...from the scarlett mix control, the ableton, and also audacity.....
 
johanbudiman said:
:thumbs up:..good question...but i know it is the first button to push on the Focusrite...every time before recording...

before i was using behringer xenyx 502 usb...but the noise...really bad...and phantom is only 15v...that is why i'm switching to focusrite 8i6
Click to expand...

That is the second time that I have read of the Xenyx mixers having 15volt phantom power. They don't! I have had an 802 for 4 years and I have MEASURED the open circuit mic spook supply and I think it was about 46V, well within the +or- 4volt spec.
The manual specc' for the 502 clearly gives the supply as "+48V".

In any event, depending on the mic circuitry, low phantom volts would be unlikely to cause noise. Most likely the mic would refuse to work at all or be distorted or you might not notice at all except on very loud input levels.

I have never used a Focusrite AI but one fact is always stated, the mic amps are bloody good! I cannot believe that BOTH channels are borked so that leaves a faulty microphone.

I can use a dynamic, SM57 on acoustic guitar at about a foot into my NI KA6 and get a neg 20ish modulation level and a very good noise floor (quieter than I can get the house!) I would expect that Scarlet to do even better and with a capacitor mic? LOADSALEVEL!

Dave.
 
Apparently pre 2009 502s have no phantom power and post 2009 502s have 48v.
q502s have 15v.

As you say though, it's not likely to be the problem either way.
 
Understand gain structure and the hyper cardioid pattern of your mic.... you're probably too far away from the mic at 15 inches as has been pointed out. And off axis? That just makes it worse. Get closer, stay in front, and keep the gain down - the aim is not to get as much signal as possible, it's to get the correct amount of signal.

And you should never ever be using software to "clean up" a simple vocal take, or be "normalising" or adjusting the amplitude and all those other things you're doing.

User error. Learn your tools. Good luck... :thumbs up:
 
I also had a hiss noise when using Audacity. I found that by adjusting the mic levels etc in windows 7 software I could reduce it but never remove it without using the noise removal tool in Audacity. After a lot of time trying to remove ground loops etc I cured it by doing 2 things. The 1st thing I did was to connect the USB lead from the interface directly to the motherboard USB socket instead of the one on the front of the PC. The 2nd thing I did was then to install the interface drivers, up until now I had been using Visio4all. These 2 steps cured all the hiss for me
 
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