so much hiss = cut high freaq. fixes the problem = but not good at all...

  • Thread starter Thread starter shackrock
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shackrock

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I recorded an acoustic song the other day - just vocals and 2 acoustic guitar tracks.

there is a LOAD of hissing behind each track....which i assume is always there, but now i actually notice it because i'm making a quiet song.

I can manage to rid the track of basically all of it with a 2.5 oct cut at about 12000. however, that kills the high end on that track completely.

any ideas? or do i just need better equip./enviroment?

thnaks
 
What are you medium are you tracking to? When it comes to noise reduction, sometimes the goal isn't to remove it completely because it can wipe out your end, as you found out. Sometimes what you need to do is just "hide" it a bit. Take out the fundamental freq. with as a narrow a band as possible. Then hit the octaves above and below the fundamental. You can also de-ess. If the noise is outside of the freq. range of a de-esser, you can side chain a compressor with an EQ. Or try a multi-band compressor.
 
skack, you need to do acoustic stuff with condensers. I'm assuming you are using dynamic mics, you shouldn't have all that hiss with condensers...especially high output medium to large diaphram condensers
 
and same goes for vocals?

could anyone link me to a cheap condensor - maybe 50-100 or so (say, on musicians friend.com ) - which may be good for vocals, etc. (better then sm57 at least)....

and maybe i could also use 2 of those condensors for drum overheads?
 
What sound card? Might also have a bad cable or be picking up some RF interference? Since you're going the DAW route, you can do some noise removal via CEP or some other similar program that lets you "capture" a noise signature. Works wonders for hiss. But again, 100% removal can cause havoc on your tracks. Shoot for 60%-70% and maybe some eq to hide the noise.
 
and what is CEP?

also - as soon as i get the money, which hopefully will be soon, i'll be getting a whole new computer, with a delta 44. I figure that will solve a lot of that problem.......not to mention help me a lot with other shit as well.
 
shack...trust me, the noise is not in the card. it's because you are using dynamic mics. You probably have to add considerable amount of gain to those 57s when miking acoustic. with a good condenser, you won't have to add hardly any gain on the pre's. this is where your noise (and THD) is coming from.
 
CEP is Cool Edit Pro. I believe Cool Edit 2000 has some noise reduction functions and it's shareware. www.syntrillium.com

You never mentioned what card you're using. My Sound Blaster Live can hiss pretty bad compared to my Dman cards.
 
shackrock said:
card is frlom years ago...listerally

SB AWE 16.
Click to expand...

eeeekkk.... that's probably the culprit right there.... another thing to check for is to see if the hiss is on the wave files or on the d/a converters coming out.... maybe your files are fine but you're just hearing the hiss on playback. anywho, definitely upgrade the card.
 
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