JahooRoisym
New member
Hi everyone!
I am writing in a desperate hope of getting help. At first I have to mention that I’m new to recording and mixing so I might babble with no sense.
To say thing shortly – my audio interface (Presonus Audiobox USB) produces annoying hissing noise. While for music the signal to noise ratio may suffice, for voiceovers it’s just plain bad.
When I arm the track and set monitoring in Ableton Live to ‘auto’ (or ‘in’) I can clearly hear the noise and the Lives Spectrum analysis (from Audio Effects) shows that it’s at around -118 dB and that’s with the input gain knob on the Audiobox set all the way down (even with the mic unplugged). So it would seem that the internal noise of the interface is at around -118dB.
When I record a normal voice at a few cm from my Rode NT-2 mic, with the input gain set at 50%, the peak of the voice in the spectrum is -40 dB. One of my test samples is here:
normalized, raw - soundcloud.com/jahooroisym/hiss-test-normalized (sorry, forum rules won't let me past an URL)
My main question is: is the noise floor of -118dB normal?
Things that I THINK I ruled out so far:
1. Ground loop – nope. Tried it on laptop running on battery, with no audible effect (the Audiobox is USB powered btw).
2. Bad/noisy PC – nope. Apart from my main desktop I have tried on a new Sony VAIO laptop with the exact same effect.
3. Bad/noisy environment/mic – nope. As I said the -118 dB noise is there even regardless of the mic being plugged in. When I have the mic plugged in, the noise floor is raised only when I turn my input gain to as high as 60% (about 1-o’clock). So it’s it not the mic nor the noise in the room.
4. Bad interface – might be, but not sure. I borrowed an Alesis Multimix USB from a friend to compare as this was my first thought. Turns out the Multimix also produces the noise floor of around -120db - its only slightly better than the Audiobox. This is when I became a little depressed as I started to suspect I am doing something horribly wrong.
5. Other things. I tried different cables, different usb sockets, recording in different rooms and even apartments, all with the exact same effect.
So either I’m unlucky and both the Audiobox and Multimix have just bad pre-amps or other internals, or I’m doing something wrong. The bottom line is – the recorded voiceovers are very bad. I tried using the Izotope RX2 denoiser but at this rate of signal to noise there are lots of artifacts.
Any help or suggestion would be gladly appreciated.
Thanks in advance
Jahoo
I am writing in a desperate hope of getting help. At first I have to mention that I’m new to recording and mixing so I might babble with no sense.
To say thing shortly – my audio interface (Presonus Audiobox USB) produces annoying hissing noise. While for music the signal to noise ratio may suffice, for voiceovers it’s just plain bad.
When I arm the track and set monitoring in Ableton Live to ‘auto’ (or ‘in’) I can clearly hear the noise and the Lives Spectrum analysis (from Audio Effects) shows that it’s at around -118 dB and that’s with the input gain knob on the Audiobox set all the way down (even with the mic unplugged). So it would seem that the internal noise of the interface is at around -118dB.
When I record a normal voice at a few cm from my Rode NT-2 mic, with the input gain set at 50%, the peak of the voice in the spectrum is -40 dB. One of my test samples is here:
normalized, raw - soundcloud.com/jahooroisym/hiss-test-normalized (sorry, forum rules won't let me past an URL)
My main question is: is the noise floor of -118dB normal?
Things that I THINK I ruled out so far:
1. Ground loop – nope. Tried it on laptop running on battery, with no audible effect (the Audiobox is USB powered btw).
2. Bad/noisy PC – nope. Apart from my main desktop I have tried on a new Sony VAIO laptop with the exact same effect.
3. Bad/noisy environment/mic – nope. As I said the -118 dB noise is there even regardless of the mic being plugged in. When I have the mic plugged in, the noise floor is raised only when I turn my input gain to as high as 60% (about 1-o’clock). So it’s it not the mic nor the noise in the room.
4. Bad interface – might be, but not sure. I borrowed an Alesis Multimix USB from a friend to compare as this was my first thought. Turns out the Multimix also produces the noise floor of around -120db - its only slightly better than the Audiobox. This is when I became a little depressed as I started to suspect I am doing something horribly wrong.
5. Other things. I tried different cables, different usb sockets, recording in different rooms and even apartments, all with the exact same effect.
So either I’m unlucky and both the Audiobox and Multimix have just bad pre-amps or other internals, or I’m doing something wrong. The bottom line is – the recorded voiceovers are very bad. I tried using the Izotope RX2 denoiser but at this rate of signal to noise there are lots of artifacts.
Any help or suggestion would be gladly appreciated.
Thanks in advance
Jahoo