Hiss turning up in recordings?

[GrandMasterK]

I'm about to record a thunderstorm that's do around here in a couple hours. I hooked my SM86 up to my amp, and then the amp up to my field recorder. I did a practice record and I'm getting what I think is called "room noise" in the recording. I can't get it alone so it'd be hard to get rid of later on without getting rid of everything else. A stereo mic that came with my recorder doesn't have any of that. My guess is it's the amp amplifying the signal doing that. Well, I tried just hooking the SM86 straight up to the recorder and it didn't pick up anything, not even birds cherping in a tree right next to a window.

I've got the gain half way (1/2), that's kinda the region that is able to pick people closing car doors and birds churping. So...is this abnormal or do I just have the juice to high or what. I didn't think it was normal for amps to start making noise when amplifying. I just don't want to turn the amp far down, then come later and find out that the thunderstorm was hardly picked up and the only way to get some volume is to amplify the signal on the computer, which ends up creating this room noise.

I'm a smidge confused. When I have my amp hooked up to my soundcard, I have the gain at 90% when I talk into it and listening back, there is no annoying room noise or anything like that.

 

[EddieRay]

What kind of amp is it? If it's a guitar amp I don't know if you'll ever be able to get the gain you want without some amount of amp noise. You should look into a small mixer or a mic preamp with phantom power.

 

[GrandMasterK]

it's a rane ms-b1, it does have phantom power. I'm not sure what phantom power does (even after reading a wiki on it), the field recorder had a phantom power off and on switch which I leave off because I don't know what it does.

Having said that, I wasn't able to record the storm because it was to rough, it was knocking things in the room around and bashing the window around, I couldnt get a clear thunder noise if I wanted to.

I'd still like to know what the problem is.

 

[whjr15]

turn the phantom power ON, since the SM86 is a condenser mic...

as far as what "phantom" power does -- to put it simple, it powers condenser mics so that they perform like theyre supposed to. your weak signal is most likely because your phantom switch was off. turn it on and see if you get better results.

if you are still having the same problem after you turn the phantom power on, post again... and someone who is better qualified with the "technical" side can help you. but i DO know that if you dont have the phantom ON, and youre using a condenser, you WILL have a very weak, almost inaudible signal.


oh yeah... be sure to turn the gain all the way down on that channel before you turn on the phantom, then adjust it accordingly.




hope this helped!