Things that make noise and screw up your tracks

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jeff_D
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Jeff_D

Jeff_D

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I've seen some beautiful studios in this forum and some amazing work- I've also talked with some really smart people around here and so I pose this question-

What steps through the construction process do you (any of ya) take to eliminate or at least limit the amount of noise that will eventually end up on an otherwise perfect track- i.e. grounding issues to reduce hum and electrical noise in recordings, lighting- halogen makes alot of noise in the first 5- 10 minutes of warming up, dimmers or flourescent lighting and such that create hum, and anything else that goes into the studio that could potentially rear its ugly humming head on your tracks- maybe this is common sense but maybe we can put together a list of do's and dont's for studio construction on any level or scale- pro or basement 2 room.

-electrical wiring techniques?
-power conditioning?
-types of lighting to stay away from?
-locations of equipment relative to other stuff?
-any rules of thumb-?
 
Turn off any fans, or for that matter, anything with a cooling fan.

No squeeky chairs or stools.

Make sure that the singer's feet won't kick the mic stand.

Re mic'd guitars..........trim all excess strings off close to the tuning pegs.

Definitely NO synthetic/plastic "Homie" style clothing to be worn while recording, particularly when you have LD condensers set up..........this stuff is a bitch, especially the hissy noise it makes as someone wearing it moves.





:cool:
 
Halogen lamps with dimmers even in different rooms can make noise. Externally worn key rings, biker type wallets with chains and such have a way of ruining takes.
Also I home ran the wire to the electrical outlets from each outlet back to the breaker box rather than daisey chain from outlet to outlet to help avoid ground loops. No signal carrying cables run parallel with power or speaker lines to avoid hum and if they must cross each other, do so at right angles.
 
It's the little things ........like when you solo the main vocal track and at the end of a line you hear the singer whisper under his breath.........."farck"...........just because he thought he stuffed up a note.

I actually promised that particular singer that if he ever did it again, I would boost his "farck" and leave it in the mix on his demo...........:D

:cool:
 
Interesting stuff guys- what about your furnace- its gotta big ass motor in it- noisy electrically and audibly- and alot of home studios are in the basement- ever had a problem there? what about the sound of moving air coming out of the supply vents- is this noise negligable?
 
Basements per se and furnaces aren't the norm here so I can't comment, but in relation to ducting and vents, it is usually recommended to use ducting larger than would normally be specified for a given situation.............the idea being that you reduce the velocity of the air whilst still moving the same volume, hence less noise.

Do a search here on "HVA"/ducting/etc and see what comes up as this has been covered here before.

:cool:
 
c7sus said:
Tell your kids to stay away from the ice and water dispensor on the freezer door.
Click to expand...

Damn, I pop ice out of plastic trays from a dollar store, and collect water as it drips from the tap. You've got $1K beer cooler that makes its own ice and carry on about politics and the economy like you lost your job scraping gum off of city streets. Sheesh...
 
what if your tracking to the computer- wont do much good to have it turned off
 
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