P
Phinney
New member
Newbie here with a couple questions about dynamics, gain, and noise, but let me explain the situation first.
I work for a small nonprofit. One of our ongoing projects involves creating spoken word recordings – essays, poetry, voiceovers for videos, etc. So far, about 80% of the people we’ve recorded are men. As our budget is small, we don’t record in studios. Instead, we either bring the speaker to our office or bring our equipment to them. About 50% is done at our location and the other 50% at theirs. Neither our location nor any we visit is particularly quiet and none have very good acoustics. We knew that this could mean some trade-offs in recording quality and tried to set our expectations accordingly. What we wanted were reasonably good, clean recordings – we had no illusions about achieving pro level quality.
Prior to the start, I did as much research (here and elsewhere) as I could on reasonable equipment. We made some decisions and bought the following equipment (note: a couple pieces were donated to us):
Electrovoice RE16
Studio Projects VTB-1
FMR RNC
Speck ASC-T
Behringer Multigate Pro XR4400 (bought later, see below)
M-Audio Delta 44
Behringer UB502 (used as a headphone amp)
2 Beyerdynamic DT 770 headphones
Mogami Quad cabling
plus, mic stands, power conditioning, etc.
I opted for the RE16 because it seemed that it would be a good choice working in relatively noisy environments with inexperienced mic users. Of course, it wouldn’t be the best mic for everyone but we had to start somewhere. Typically, I place the mic about 3-8 inches away from the speaker and slightly off axis both vertically (~30-40 deg) and horizontally (~20-30 deg). This positioning seems to do well; don't have problems with plosives and it works with people who move their head a bit while speaking.
Okay, the problem… in order to get somewhat reasonable sound levels, I have to really crank the gain. And even though the VTB-1 has a max gain of 72db the last 10-15db are pretty noisy (also, I typically don't dial in any tube as it raises the noise floor). So, instead of pinning the needle in the preamp I often add gain using the RNC and/or the ASC - and even then I normally need to boost the level in software.
Using all this gain has come at a cost: noise. Despite our understanding that we wouldn’t be creating pro stuff, we didn’t expect all the noise that we’ve gotten. Amplified ambient noise, equipment noise, and RFI noise are all problems. The VTB-1 doesn’t reject RFI and because of that I’ve acquired quite a collection of toroids, rods, and clamp-on beads made from various ferrite materials in order to attenuate the noise (it's different at each location). We bought the Behringer expander to try to contain the other two types of noise. It works best on the ambient noise, or rather, the effect it has with the ambient noise is more pleasing as such noise isn’t usually constant in nature. The equipment noise (usually hiss) is another matter. While the expander takes care of such noise between words, phrases, sentences, etc it can’t handle this noise while the speaker is talking. Depending on the quality of the speaker’s voice, this noise can be quite noticeable and annoying.
Have I done something terribly wrong here? As I said, I’m a newbie, it’s perfectly plausible that I’ve made a critical mistake.
On my own, I’ve been wondering about errors in recording/micing technique. I’ve also been considering upgrading the preamp to something with good clean gain and better RF rejection (perhaps RNP, Grace 101, Safe Sound P1, etc). Or adding a condenser mic (ADK Hamburg, MXL v69 or v77, AT4040, SP C3, etc). I figure that they won’t need 70+ db of gain and I already have an expander so I don’t think I'd have to worry much about all the little noises that they pick up as I could gate them out. But I wonder if condensers will come with a new set of unforeseen issues. There’s so much that I don’t know.
Sorry about being long winded. Somebody please give a guy a little advice here.
I work for a small nonprofit. One of our ongoing projects involves creating spoken word recordings – essays, poetry, voiceovers for videos, etc. So far, about 80% of the people we’ve recorded are men. As our budget is small, we don’t record in studios. Instead, we either bring the speaker to our office or bring our equipment to them. About 50% is done at our location and the other 50% at theirs. Neither our location nor any we visit is particularly quiet and none have very good acoustics. We knew that this could mean some trade-offs in recording quality and tried to set our expectations accordingly. What we wanted were reasonably good, clean recordings – we had no illusions about achieving pro level quality.
Prior to the start, I did as much research (here and elsewhere) as I could on reasonable equipment. We made some decisions and bought the following equipment (note: a couple pieces were donated to us):
Electrovoice RE16
Studio Projects VTB-1
FMR RNC
Speck ASC-T
Behringer Multigate Pro XR4400 (bought later, see below)
M-Audio Delta 44
Behringer UB502 (used as a headphone amp)
2 Beyerdynamic DT 770 headphones
Mogami Quad cabling
plus, mic stands, power conditioning, etc.
I opted for the RE16 because it seemed that it would be a good choice working in relatively noisy environments with inexperienced mic users. Of course, it wouldn’t be the best mic for everyone but we had to start somewhere. Typically, I place the mic about 3-8 inches away from the speaker and slightly off axis both vertically (~30-40 deg) and horizontally (~20-30 deg). This positioning seems to do well; don't have problems with plosives and it works with people who move their head a bit while speaking.
Okay, the problem… in order to get somewhat reasonable sound levels, I have to really crank the gain. And even though the VTB-1 has a max gain of 72db the last 10-15db are pretty noisy (also, I typically don't dial in any tube as it raises the noise floor). So, instead of pinning the needle in the preamp I often add gain using the RNC and/or the ASC - and even then I normally need to boost the level in software.
Using all this gain has come at a cost: noise. Despite our understanding that we wouldn’t be creating pro stuff, we didn’t expect all the noise that we’ve gotten. Amplified ambient noise, equipment noise, and RFI noise are all problems. The VTB-1 doesn’t reject RFI and because of that I’ve acquired quite a collection of toroids, rods, and clamp-on beads made from various ferrite materials in order to attenuate the noise (it's different at each location). We bought the Behringer expander to try to contain the other two types of noise. It works best on the ambient noise, or rather, the effect it has with the ambient noise is more pleasing as such noise isn’t usually constant in nature. The equipment noise (usually hiss) is another matter. While the expander takes care of such noise between words, phrases, sentences, etc it can’t handle this noise while the speaker is talking. Depending on the quality of the speaker’s voice, this noise can be quite noticeable and annoying.
Have I done something terribly wrong here? As I said, I’m a newbie, it’s perfectly plausible that I’ve made a critical mistake.
On my own, I’ve been wondering about errors in recording/micing technique. I’ve also been considering upgrading the preamp to something with good clean gain and better RF rejection (perhaps RNP, Grace 101, Safe Sound P1, etc). Or adding a condenser mic (ADK Hamburg, MXL v69 or v77, AT4040, SP C3, etc). I figure that they won’t need 70+ db of gain and I already have an expander so I don’t think I'd have to worry much about all the little noises that they pick up as I could gate them out. But I wonder if condensers will come with a new set of unforeseen issues. There’s so much that I don’t know.
Sorry about being long winded. Somebody please give a guy a little advice here.
