problems with background noise

[dark_emotion]

Can anyone help with following?

I have a condenser mic and a c-valve pre amp. i'm trying to record using ntrack and i'm having major problems with the mic signal being too weak. when i up the input, the recordings clip and there is alot of background noise.
I'm not sure if it's the connections or the soundcard
i connected the condenser mic to the mic port on the preamp but i had to use a secondary output to connect the preamp to my soundcard, is this problematic?

my sound card is the very bad realtek ac 97......is this causing problems?

Thanks

 

[dgatwood]

I have a condenser mic and a c-valve pre amp. i'm trying to record using ntrack and i'm having major problems with the mic signal being too weak. when i up the input, the recordings clip and there is alot of background noise.
I'm not sure if it's the connections or the soundcard
i connected the condenser mic to the mic port on the preamp but i had to use a secondary output to connect the preamp to my soundcard, is this problematic?

Define "secondary output". Probably not, but without more detail, it's hard to answer that.

My gut feeling is that your preamp's output gain isn't high enough. You probably have a trim on the input and a separate gain on the output. If the output gain were too low and the preamp trim were too high, you would get this sort of problem. That's just a guess, though. In any case, this sounds like a gain staging problem---one gain being too high while another one is too low---somewhere in the signal chain.

my sound card is the very bad realtek ac 97......is this causing problems?

Probably.

 

[iratecaller666]

hey

Well your soundcard's not exactly top notch, but you shouldn't have big noise problems. That being said however, the onboard ac97, being built in to the system and being rather cheap, can pickup all sorts of noise.

Start by hooking up your preamp to something that is NOT your computer, and assess wether the device is working properly.


Use a stereo system and ensure that your master volume doesn't have to be cranked too high. If you need to crank the volume just to get a peep out of your preamp, then there's definately a problem.

Try not to up your preamp volume more than half way for this test.

... start with the volume on your preamp at 0 and the volume on your stereo at perhaps 10% and start from there. Be careful. Just make sure things work properly.

The preamp you purchased has phantom power. Are you certain that you're using the proper connections and that you have engaged the phantom power switch? (condenser mic)

Just throwing ideas at you.

Tristan

 

[bad intentionz]

if ur talking about the samson c vlave i have my mix into thew Xlr and the pre amp OUT PUT into my soundcard works fine

 

[Niimo]

could the condenser mic be picking up interference from the computer?