Notebook recording sounds like a tape!

  • Thread starter Thread starter doncom
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doncom

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I'm new at digital recording and have yet to get a "clean" sound. When I play back a recording of my kids' solo piano I get a background hiss that sounds just like what I used to get from old home tape recording equipment!

My set-up is:

Acoustic baby grand piano
Oktava MK 219 mic
Tascam US 122 USB sound card
Dell Lattitude D600 (Pentium 4 @ 1600) notebook computer
running Windows XP with 512 MB of RAM
Using the Cubasis VST mixing software bundled with Tascam 122
Recording on to an 80 GB external hard disk by IOGear
through the other USB connector.

The notebook appears to have two USB buses so that I'm going in on one and out on the other.

Any ideas where the hiss is coming from?

Thanks!

Don
 
...

well that is the most annoying thing ever.... hiss! What is the room sounding like? is ther any constant noise in it? You could try to adjust the volume settings at different part of your recording chain. This works for me sometimes. For example, turn your soundcard volume down and turn window's mixer up. If you are like me, then you may have an external volume know, try playing with that.

Another option is to use noise reduction filters. Sometimes they can make things worse but i have used them successfully before.

Oh yeah, also, what sampling rate and bit depth are you recording at? i would suggest 16 bit and 44 100 Hz as a minimum to get the best quality.

Let us know how it goes.
 
Thanks, minofifa!

This seems to be an equipment hum not ambient room noise. The Tascam 122 has a direct out where I can listen with headphones to the analog and the hum/hiss is not present at that point.

It appears to me that it is coming from either the computer or at least after the Tascam 122 sound card digitizes the signal...

I've tried minimizing the volume on the Tascam but that has no effect.

I'm recording at 16 bit and 44.1 so it should be pretty clean.

What are noise filters? Where do they go and where do I find one? Do they just cut back the high frequencies? Any brand/ model I can look for?

Thanks for any further advice!

Don
 
I don't think that an external USB HD is a good idea, I highly doubt that the throughput is fast enough to write audio files in real-time as you record, a firewire drive would be more appropriate.

You can try unhooking the USB HD and recording directly to the internal HD, you should have no issues because of the slower internal drive, my H/P laptop can easily playback 18 tracks of audio without breaking a sweat using it's "slow" internal HD.
 
Strryder said:
<<I don't think that an external USB HD is a good idea, I highly doubt that the throughput is fast enough to write audio files in real-time as you record, a firewire drive would be more appropriate.>>

Thanks, Strryder. This HD and the computer are using USB 2.0 which is supposed to be faster than firewire. The HD can also be hooked up by firewire but i'd need to buy a PCMCIA card for the firewire port. Do you thnk this is worth trying?

<<You can try unhooking the USB HD and recording directly to the internal HD, you should have no issues because of the slower internal drive, my H/P laptop can easily playback 18 tracks of audio without breaking a sweat using it's "slow" internal HD.
Click to expand...
>>

Actually, I tried writing to the internal hard disk and got lots of latency clicks. I dind't know what those were but posted a message here and was told that was the problem. The internal HD spins at only 4200 RPM so the advice I got was to use an external HD. Why do you think your slow HD works and mine did not seem to - even for a single track?

BTW, even with the internal HD, clicks and all, I get the same background hum/hiss in the digital recording!

This has me really baffled!

It sounds like there is more trouble here than speed. Any ideas?
 
HI,
I have a Dell Inspiron Laptop P4 2.2 and I just bought a Tascam USB 122 and I love it! I use it with Cakewalk Sonar 3.

regardless....first you said tape 'HISS' and then you said 'HUM' ?
Which is it?

I can't imagine 'hiss', but hum..........try lifting the ground on both the Laptop and the external HD with 3 to 2 AC adapters!

PS I hope the laptop and external drive are USB 2!
Try using the internal drive!
You can buy an internal 80 gig for ~$200
http://pcprogress.com/product.asp?orderid=69827744293101137876509&PID=IBM08K0635
 
PS

PS I forgot to mention

Set Up a 2nd Hardware Profile disabling your NIC and Modem and call it 'recording' or whatever! This is CRITICAL!

Also do a control /alt /delete and shut off all unnecessary applications and processes before recording!
 
I don't know much about this, but make sure the mic isn't touching anything and resonating because of it.

Does this happen only for piano or for other things to?
 
Unplug computer?

Have you tried running the computer off the battery while recording?

My setup is very similar:

- Dell Latitude D800 (1.3 GHz Celeron, 512 MB, 30 GB 4200 rpm internal hdd)
- Win XP
- Tascam US-122

I keep the computer unplugged while recording and then plug it in during editing. If everything is powered from the computer battery, you'll eliminate the ground loop problem.

Incidentally, I've used Adobe Audition to record and edit and haven't had any problems w/ latency clicks when recording to the internal drive. I've got the Tascam control panel latency set at 512 samples and Audition's multitrack latency set at 18 ms. I've had 8-10 tracks going at once without problems.

--Michael
 
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