My band is trying to record a few songs just for fun. We've been getting a hissing air type sound when we play back what we've recorded. Any ideas about how to get rid of this?
My band is trying to record a few songs just for fun. We've been getting a hissing air type sound when we play back what we've recorded. Any ideas about how to get rid of this?
Lots of potential causes, alone or in combination:
- Noise in the room from HVAC, refrigerator, PC fan, etc.
- Bad gain structure (i.e. having the levels at one or more stage of your recording chain set too high.) This could be anywhere, but the key points in your chain would be the mic pres (input trim) on your mixer, the input gain on your m-Audio, and the input gain on your laptop software. Don't over-crank anything. Keep things running around 0VU on the analog side and around -18 to -6dBFS on the digital side. Don't try to get everything as close to digital zero as possible. EDIT: Oops, Dogbreath beat me to this one .
- You have very good ears and are simply hearing the fact that the Mackie and the m-Audio are entry-level gear and do have higher noise levels than more expensive gear.