the cleanest preamp of all...

antichef

antichef

pornk rock
What do you think of this acoustic guitar recording?

View attachment 2015-04-11-no-preamp.mp3

(I tried to upload a wav file, but I guess it was too big)

I ran my microphones straight into my converter with no preamp at all. I had to use an inline phantom power making thing. And then in my DAW, I added 42 dB of gain - I think this clips once, but only on a fast transient - I wanted to upload it totally dry, but I can compress or something in a mix of course. I like the sound, but there's some noise. I used a noise reduction plugin, and it worked like a charm, but I would love to reduce the noise at tracking time.

I checked the impedance on the microphones - I believe it's 180 ohms. I checked the input impedance on the converter - for "balanced" mode, which I suppose I'm using, it's 24,000 ohms. That's over 100x if I have my figures right, which is greatly in excess of the recommended 10x ratio. Does anyone think that could be responsible for some of the noise, and if so, is there a clean passive way to reduce the ratio?
 
I didn't notice the noise so that's good, could you show us the unprocessed track with no noise reduction to give us an idea of how bad it is? anyway it sounds great, very clear and clean sound. As far as I know an impedance too high would cause the noise, but I'm not an electronics engineer or expert.
 
antichef said:
I used a noise reduction plugin, and it worked like a charm, but I would love to reduce the noise at tracking time.
Click to expand...

When I first listened to the recording (nice guitar work btw) it sounded to me like a high cut filter was in place. Then I saw your note that you used a noise reduction plugin, which may be what I was hearing.

I would love to hear the original without the plugin to hear the noise to which you are referring, as Btyre suggested.

The problem with noise reduction is that it takes out stuff that you want to keep as well. Unless you use something like iZotope RX to sample the noise only, and then just remove that.

You only have to send a blank sample - a sample with no guitar in it. Then we can decide what to do about the noise
 
Btyre - that is the unprocessed track - I'm happy you don't hear much noise (it's hiss). I'll post the noise reduced track when I get a chance.

Mixsit - the microphones are two AKG C414B-ULS with the low cut engaged at 75 hz. They are in X-Y and were pointing approximately at the 14th fret of the guitar from about 18 inches away. The converter is a Lynx Aurora 16

GuitarLegend - thanks - i should have been more clear about that being the raw track. You can mostly hear the hiss at the end when I stop beating on the guitar - reminds of tape hiss. There's not a ton of high end - I guess maybe the mics are a little dark?
 
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There is a model with trim pots for the inputs, but I don't have that one. I always thought of that model being intended for hotter-than-line-level inputs, but maybe it goes both ways. Anyway, academic question for me :)
 
That sounds beautiful 'chef. Make a record!

I spent forever trying to get that sound--and once I figured out how to do it, the preamp became unimportant. Sounds to me like you've nailed it!
 
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