Low Pass Filters and Hiss

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HomeNoiseRecord

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With being generally out of pocket i am yet to buy myself a decent USB soundcard, and i know all of you will cring at what i will say now, but im using my on board laptop soundcard, with Asio4All to beat the lag.

If i double track guitars i can get a fairly decent sound, but there is always a high frequency hiss. I managed toget rid of a large portion using a low pass filter but was wondering what frequencies this may run at? I dont want to set the filter too low you see, and risk cutting out part of my guitar tone.

i "think" when i once tried it, i cut out all above 15KHz. Does this sound about right?
 
HomeNoiseRecord said:
With being generally out of pocket i am yet to buy myself a decent USB soundcard, and i know all of you will cring at what i will say now, but im using my on board laptop soundcard, with Asio4All to beat the lag.

If i double track guitars i can get a fairly decent sound, but there is always a high frequency hiss. I managed toget rid of a large portion using a low pass filter but was wondering what frequencies this may run at? I dont want to set the filter too low you see, and risk cutting out part of my guitar tone.

i "think" when i once tried it, i cut out all above 15KHz. Does this sound about right?
Click to expand...

Are you talking about electric guitar or acoustic?

If noise is the problem, then it's going to be throughout the entire spectrum. Human hearing is most sensitive at around 2kHz, so if you want to bring down noise with a filter, that would be the most effective place to do it. Unfortunately you'll also bring down a lot of the sound that you want to keep.

If you want to do it with a low pass filter, then it's a trade off between clarity of the guitar and noise. Only you can know what your compromise point is.
 
If you're talking about electric, there's really not THAT much going on in the 15khz range, and I know a couple people who always lowpass in the 7-8k range just because they don't like the high frequency "hair" that comes with anything above that. That seems a little draconian to me, but I've certainly used shelf filters there before.

Acoustic, totally different story. There's a lot of sparkle up there that gives life to guitars. I'd try to get it sorted out elsewhere in your signal chain (what mic? How close to the guitar? are you running it straight into your computer;s soundcard?) rather than EQing it out.
 
if the hiss is when your not playing try a gate to shut so no signal goes into the recording ,the trick is to get it so you do not lose any of the guitar inital sound as the gate opens , and try a limitter to stop the signal peaking.
 
Are you getting the hiss before you hit the record button or after?

Fix it at it's source.
 
sorry to miss out quite a bit of info there :s

its an electric for a start - my set up is Guitar - Pod2 - Laptop (mic input, ouch)
until i get a decent soundcard its all for my personal demo's so im not worried about amazing quality. I have a noise gate on the Pod for buzzing etc.

the hiss sounds kinda like when you used to record things from the radio onto tape ahaha.

Heres a very badly mixed version of a tune i did today, (if you manage to hear anything through the mud please dont steal it ;))

http://www.box.net/shared/hls4j8lqqx

.....just noticed some riffs towards the end are compeltely unnoticed in the mix, might just wait till i get a decent setup!!!
 
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there's far too much going in that song for you to care about noise at all.
 
Agreed. The music is flat out from beginning to end. The only time I can hear hiss is right at the end when the musos stop playing, and you probably should have chopped that bit off anyway.
With that style of music you could probably record it on an old cassette portastudio and the hiss wouldnt be noticed.
 
axeman_ukl said:
if the hiss is when your not playing try a gate to shut so no signal goes into the recording ,the trick is to get it so you do not lose any of the guitar inital sound as the gate opens , and try a limitter to stop the signal peaking.
Click to expand...

Why should he need a limiter because he uses a gate? :confused: Not to mention, if you
have a noise problem, a limiter should never be thought of as part of the solution.
 
Aaaaaahhhhhhh!!!

Homenoise,

The reason you have too much hiss is because you have too much *everything*. There's not an aspect of your production that isn't just plain too much, from the balls-out arrangement to the constant signal clipping.

But germane to your question is that the reason your hiss is there is because you have over-boosted the high frequencies in your mix. There's practically no energy-to-frequency slope at all, and your cymbals sound like they're made of lead crystal in a Memorex commercial. There's no point in low passing at all if you keep your high freqs where they're supposed to be instead of death-scooping your EQ.

BTW, that death scooping is also giving you a bit of low frequency rumble that shouldn't be there either; you just can't hear it because of the wall of home noise you have going on that's masking it.

Throttle back the the "there's no such thing as too much" approach to mixing, because, believe me, even for headbanging there's such a thing as too much. Cut the clipping (which also contributes to aliasing "hiss" when using a cheap converter like a laptop soundcard) and take it easy on the smiley face EQing, and you'll be a much happier camper.

G.
 
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agreed,
that mix is crap and im regretting putting it up already! The hiss in mention as picked up on is like at the end when the guitars stop, althogh its there constantly due to my poor equipment.
Thanks for the replies though, even if you hate it. Cheers for picking up on the low rumble too, wasnt sure what that was...
 
SouthSIDE Glen said:
Homenoise,

The reason you have too much hiss is because you have too much *everything*. There's not an aspect of your production that isn't just plain too much, from the balls-out arrangement to the constant signal clipping.

But germane to your question is that the reason your hiss is there is because you have over-boosted the high frequencies in your mix. There's practically no energy-to-frequency slope at all, and your cymbals sound like they're made of lead crystal in a Memorex commercial. There's no point in low passing at all if you keep your high freqs where they're supposed to be instead of death-scooping your EQ.

BTW, that death scooping is also giving you a bit of low frequency rumble that shouldn't be there either; you just can't hear it because of the wall of home noise you have going on that's masking it.


Throttle back the the "there's no such thing as too much" approach to mixing, because, believe me, even for headbanging there's such a thing as too much. Cut the clipping (which also contributes to aliasing "hiss" when using a cheap converter like a laptop soundcard) and take it easy on the smiley face EQing, and you'll be a much happier camper.

G.
Click to expand...

Ahh, nothing a good mastering job can't fix, really
 
ok sorry about bringing this up again, Iv taken all the effects and my crap attempt at mixing has been removed, the link if you reeeeaallly wanna listen is below.

Going back to the original questoin about hiss, all should be fine in future, as a USB soundcard is now in the post :D

Hopefully all i have to focus on then is my playing :o



The song is Follow The Trails
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/default.cfm?bandID=1034834
 
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