Reducing Mic Noise

[Kris2]

Here's the scenario: I've miked my entire drum kit. All of the toms & snare are miked with AT dynamic mics from their KitPak series. The overheads are Earthworks TC30K's, and the ride & hats are miked with Sony ECM-77's. The problem is that I'm getting a tremendous amount of hiss when I bring up the dynamic mics to the desired level. The condenser's are fine. Should I insert some sort of noise reduction between my drum mixer (Mackie 1202VLZ Pro) and my main recorder/board (Fostex FD8), wait & run the entire mix through a noise reduction unit, or is there another solution. I'm looking at a dbx150X Type 1 NR unit, but I'm not sure if this is exactly what I should purchase. Thanks for listening...

Kris

 

[John Sayers]

Kris2 - with the setup you've described there should be no reason to have hiss. Firstly regarding DBX noise reduction - Dolby/DBX noise reduction is designed to remove hiss from a recorder - they do it by compressing onto tape and then expanding when playing back thus reducing the noise of the tape recorder so it doesn'y apply in your case - now with your setup the only thing I can figure out is that you have the gain structure of your console out of wack. Firstly with your console make sure you have you output faders at zero to start with. Them make sure your mike faders are at zero - then you can adjust the mike levels using the mic gain control on each input module. If you fail to do this you land up having to turn your mike trims (i.e. mike preamps) up too far and into their noise and distortion areas.
Hope this helps
cheers