MR8 - background hissing with external mic

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dunc2809

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Hi everybody,

I'm completely new to the world of home recording. I just wanted to record a bit of acoustic guitar and thought it would be best to invest in a condenser mic to get better quality recordings. Having invested in a mic costing nearly $200 plus a pre amp and mic stand + cables I then found that the quality of the recording with the inbulit mic is better than with the external mic. I thought at first it might be the mic itself but I noticed that even without the mic attached there was a lot of hissing coming through the headphones when I had switched to mic/line - which isn't there when I use the bult in mic or record electric guitar direct. Having had lots of other problems (no flash card supplied, not told that I need a phantom power supply - microphone not screwing into the holder) and having been back to the shop 3 times already I thought I'd rather ask here first before going back to the shop and probably being lied to or fobbed off.
Has anyone got any idea what the problem could be? Could it be the equipment itself? I noticed that the hissing got even worse if I switched on reverb and/or natural/bright.

Thanks in advance for any ideas you might have.
 
What kind of preamp and mic is it? How are the gain settings? Are there noisy things going on in your room, because a condenser mic is extremely sensitive and will pick up the tiniest sound in a room. Using the crappiest dynamic mic straight into the mr8 should be better than using the built-in mic on the mr8.
 
Since you're using an external mic-pre, try getting all the gain you can out of the external pre (without clipping), while keeping the mr8's trim knob down as far as possible (ideally all the way) That way you'll get the most benefit from the external preamp. This sounds a bit like a gain-staging problem.

Yup, knowing a bit more about the setup would be helpful.
 
Sounds like the pre may be causing the problem. The condensor mic would probably be okay with a different recording system (ie; one designed to take the preamp signal). Sorry. Also, the mastering section with powerful/natural/bright is really not a great feature with the mr-8. It will increase not only hiss, but other unwelcome gremlins as well. I use only external mics on mine, (two SM57s and an SM58) and have had little trouble getting the mix I want. I hope you can get it worked out - best of luck.
 
hissing

I agree, it's a gain issue...but the mastering features will add unwanted noise too. Turn up the pre-amp gain, turn down the MR8 trim. See if that helps. Sometime a slight adjustment in the trim will make a big difference in the hiss. Good luck and keep on pluckin'
 
Thanks everyone for your advice. I really appreciate it. I'll definitely give all your ideas a try. Maybe there's hope for me yet. But once I get this problem sorted out I'm sure I'l have lots of other questions, so beware!

As to the setup. I use a Millennium mic pre (I need it for the phantom power). It only cost around $35 but the review I read for it was OK. It has a "ground" switch on it - not sure what that's for (there's no documentation) but it doesn't seem to make any difference whether it's on or off. I had the gain on the pre-amp turned up about half way or so and the trim on the MR8 about three quarters of the way up. The mic i use is an SE2200 fom SE Electronics. But the thing that makes me think it might be an eqipment fault is that even when the mike isn't plugged into the MR8 I get a lot of hissing through the headphones when I arm a track for recording which I don't get when the switch is set to internal mic - where i can put the trim up even further without getting anywhere near as much hiss.
 
known fault

one of the known faults of the MR-8 is a noisy headphone jack.

many people have reported this problem, and have found:

1) the noise heard in the headphones is not on the recorded track
2) sometimes you can clear the noise by either
a) plugging the phones into the other jack
b) switching the machine off and back on

you might want to make sure whether this may be the problem.
just listen closely to a recorded track and see whether the hiss is on the track (by using the stereo out rather than the phones)

as mentioned before, i would use more of the PRE and less of the MR8 if possible. i am not sure about your pre....but on mine i have a choice to use either an xlr out or a 1/4 inch line out. try switching inputs and see if that helps or hurts.

good luck
 
mr8

could just be the headphone issue, but please resist the urge to turn everything up and the mr8 trim down, bad gain structure, not familure with your preamp but you want to run that about half way, if there is no clipping indicator, if there is, run it up to clipping then back it off a quarter of a turn, the trim on the mr8 SHOULD be used, bring up till you get a red clipping lite on a take, then back it down just to the point that it doesnt blink on at all during a take...

do a search for gain structure an the net, lots of good info....
the condensor will pick up any noise in the room, if anything is buzzing it will pick it up, make shure you have good cords too...this can cause the same problem
 
hissing in phones

Had the same problem when bringing up my pre but it didn't transfer to my recordings. It was the headphone amp in the recorder. Pj
 
For some odd reason Fostex engineers have never been able to design a proper headphone amp - don't tell me it takes a lot of money, it must be a question of design priority. I built a four channel headphone distribution amp half a year ago using nothing more than ordinary resistors, pots and some op-amps having a decent noise figure - nothing fancy at all. It's dead quiet, sounds like a unit costing ten times more, and it cost me about $20 to build - case and all. Well, as long as Fostex doesn't let the noise get onto the card/tape/hard disk when recording, I don't complain. Just puzzled...

regards, Nils
 
Thanks for all the tips

I tried using less gain on the pre amp and it certainly improved the results to the extent that I'm fairly happy with the results. I still need to do some more experimenting as the volume of the recordings is not very high and I have to normalize the wav file on the PC to get a decent volume. If it hadn't been for all your advice though I'd still probably have no idea how to fix the problem. So once again thanks alot!
 
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