what should i turn down?

E

electricabanana

New member
basically what i am wondering is what part in the signal chain gives the most unwanted noise.

I am recording from mic -> mixer(preamp) -> sound card.

within the mixer i can adjuct gain for the mic channel as well as a fader for the mic channel and a fader for the overall mix.

i can adjust the soundcards sensitivity a bit too.

is there a rule for what faders etc should be turned up or down? currently i go with low gain, maximum soundcard sensitivity, and then adjust the mic channel fader till it is coming through at the desired volume.

is there an alternate method that would give a cleaner, more transparent sound? (i am not satisfied with the signal/noise ratio)

thanks in advance
 
You should basically have *everything* except the pre-gain on the mic preamp at unity.

Then make sure you understand the difference between 0dBVU and -0dBFS (which is substantial, as it seems there's a rash of people who don't understand that "day one of recording school" concept for some reason).

If you *don't* understand it, shoot for the "meat" of your signal to be hanging around -18dBFS, allowing for transients of maybe -12 or -10dBFS.

THIS IS NOT LOW - THIS IS NORMAL. This is how the system was designed to work. This is how you *get* the nice signal-to-noise. This is where the clarity is. This is where the "focus" is. This is where the dynamics sound natural. This is where the distortion is lowest.

Not by overdriving a mic preamp like it was the front end of a Marshall stack...
 
You are doing the exact opposite of what you are supposed to do. The way you have it set up, your soundcard is amplifying the noise of the board to get a decent signal level.

What you are supposed to do:
1. solo the mic channel, this will make the meters read the input signal of the channel.
2. send the signal to the channel. (sing, play guitar, what ever you will be recording) and set the trim/gain so that the signal hovers around 0dbVU on the meter.
3. Set everything else at unity


The gain control is for setting the signal level coming into the board. 0dbvu= line level.

The channel fader is for setting the relative volume between channels if you are mixing. Setting the fader at 0db (unity) means that you are not cutting or boosting the input signal.

Your soundcard should always be set at unity because that is the last place you want to make gain adjustments. Depending on the card, you could be adjusting the gain after conversion, which is just useless. If you have to turn the gain down at the card, you are either cooking the input and adding analog distortion or cooking the converters and adding digital distortion. (or both) If you have to turn it up at the card, you aren't feeding enough signal to the board which will make your signal to noise worse.

Do a search on gain staging, you will find all kinds of stuff.
 
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