D
dbsoccer
Member
I have been trying to locate the cause of the cloudy, non-crisp vocals in my In-Ears (non-vocals are fine.). Today I stumbled across something totally unexpected. I found a hissing sound in all three of the Mic channels of my mixer. Here's what I did to verify.
1. For Mic1, Mic2 and Mic3 I turned the gain knobs, the channel levels and the main level knob all way to the left.
2. I plugged in head phones into the Headphone port (nothing else, zippo) and turned on the power to the mixer.
3. I then turned up the gain, channel level and main level to the right for each mic - one at a time.
4. I immediately got the hissing sound. And it isn't trivial. It's pretty loud, actually.
5. By turning knobs up and down I verified that all 3 mic channels have the same issue. And when I got all three turned all the way to the right it was loud.
I called Mackie who talked about an expected noise floor but it is hard to quantify. So what I did was stop in to my local Guitar Center and ran the same test on one of their display Mackie mixers using my headphones. Nothing. I heard nothing.
My mixer is plugged into a power strip that has not only surge protection but EMI and RFI conditioning as well. It's not a $2000 power conditioner but it probably better than nothing.
I bought the mixer used a couple of years ago. A replacement for this same mixer is about $220. The guy at Mackie said they have service shops but the parts and labor to repair my mixer could conceivably approach the cost of a new one and when it's repaired it would still be a used mixer.
My thought right now is to just buy a new mixer. There is a reason it was in the used pile and this may be it.
Thoughts? Thanks.
1. For Mic1, Mic2 and Mic3 I turned the gain knobs, the channel levels and the main level knob all way to the left.
2. I plugged in head phones into the Headphone port (nothing else, zippo) and turned on the power to the mixer.
3. I then turned up the gain, channel level and main level to the right for each mic - one at a time.
4. I immediately got the hissing sound. And it isn't trivial. It's pretty loud, actually.
5. By turning knobs up and down I verified that all 3 mic channels have the same issue. And when I got all three turned all the way to the right it was loud.
I called Mackie who talked about an expected noise floor but it is hard to quantify. So what I did was stop in to my local Guitar Center and ran the same test on one of their display Mackie mixers using my headphones. Nothing. I heard nothing.
My mixer is plugged into a power strip that has not only surge protection but EMI and RFI conditioning as well. It's not a $2000 power conditioner but it probably better than nothing.
I bought the mixer used a couple of years ago. A replacement for this same mixer is about $220. The guy at Mackie said they have service shops but the parts and labor to repair my mixer could conceivably approach the cost of a new one and when it's repaired it would still be a used mixer.
My thought right now is to just buy a new mixer. There is a reason it was in the used pile and this may be it.
Thoughts? Thanks.
