I am getting an ungodly amount of hiss....

D

D. Lundy

New member
Recently, I was asked by a folk group to record them. I accepted their request, and during my fall break (I'm in college) I decided to buy some additional equipment to help record them. Today, after buying a new dynamic mic, stand, etc I decided to do a test recording with my new equipment. The amount of hiss is incredible, it's so bad that it drowns out all of the desired audio. Because my recent music largely consists of midi and electronics, I haven't actually recorded a whole lot lately. My set up is bare bones: a Yamaha MW10 USB mixer, a couple of decent dynamic mics, a good condensor mic, and Steinberg Cubase 5.

I'm starting to suspect my Yamaha MW10 USB mixer is the culprit. Part of the wiring for the power cable is exposed.... Besides that, I really do not know what the problem could be. I didn't have a problem with hiss when I was recording with the otherwise useless Sony Acid 7...

Any ideas? I really need to get this problem fixed. Could it be a setting in Cubase that is picking up the unwanted frequencies?

Any advice would be helpful. Thank you



PS: I've tried everything on my mixer (changing volume levels, gain levels, etc), yet it still invariably produces hiss.
 
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Something is very wrong. That equipment should not be giving you even close to that much hiss. Sounds like something is not connected or set-up correctly.
 
Do you have the gain controls all the way up? Acoustic instruments sometimes aren't very loud and dynamic mics aren't very sensitive. That is a recipe for hiss if you are turning up cheap-ish preamps to get the level you need. The condenser mic shouldn't give you the same problem, if it does, there is something else wrong.
 
Have you tried, Pluging a different mic in? changing the XLR cable? Changing the input? or does the problem reside even when there is nothing pluged into the mixer? if thats the case have you tried turning down each input in turn to see if the problem resides on a single channel? Most of the time these problems have the simplest solution, and I dont think that the DAW will make any difference. Have you cheacked the levels coming into cubase? try to check every part of your signal chain.
 
benherron speaks words of wisdom.

The most likely cause is something not set right in the signal path (for example, an unused channel with its gain set to max).

Go through a process of elimination.

Hook up the mixer. Don't plug anything in. Make sure all gains are right down. Make sure the routing path to the USB output is set correctly.

Then progressively add elements one at a time.
 
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