New recording setup, but I can't filter out the hiss

[kwakatak]

I've been working at getting a good rendition of Simon Fox's "The Fisherman", a Celtic-inspired fingerstyle piece. Well, I've been at it for about 3 or 4 weeks now and on the guitar front. It's getting pretty smooth since I've been woodshedding on it almost exclusively for the past 2 days. The only problem I'm having is with the outro, mainly because my fingers are still trying to find the right place to let the arpeggios ring but I figure I'll have it in another week or so.

 

I also took this opportunity to give the new UB1202 mixer a try, but the setup isn't ideal and I'm having a little trouble getting rid of some audio artifact. No matter how low I set the gain or Main Mix slider, I'm still getting a significant amount of hiss. If anyone would take the time to look over these settings, please tell me what I'm doing wrong! :banghead:

 

Here's an image of the mixer setup with details to follow:

 

 

The image quality isn't the best, so here's the details:

LINE 1 section settings:

- my ATR-20 condensor mic connects to the mixer via the 1/4" BAL OR UNBAL input. (The mic has a gold adaptor that allows me to connect to the larger 1/4" input)

- GAIN is set to 12 o'clock (approx -10 dB)

- EQ are all flat

- LO CUT button is OFF

- FX is set to 0

- PAN is centered

- LEVEL is between 1 & 2 o'clock (approx. +4.5)

 

MAIN SECTION settings:

- PHANTOM power button is ON

- FX SEND is 0

- TAPE TO CTRL ROOM button in ON

- TAPE TO MIX button is ON

- MAIN MIX slider is +10 (all the way forward)

- FX TO CTRL R. button is ON

- PHONES/CONTROL ROOM level knob is set to 12 o'clock

 

OUTPUTS:

- PHONES connected for monitoring (the adaptor is plugged in but the headphones were disconnected so that I could reconnect them to the PC for post-production.)

- MAIN OUT, L Channel goes out to the pink sound input jack at the back of my PC via a 25' guitar chord and a jack endpin adaptor

 

During recording, the mic is pointed toward at the 14th fret and angled toward the soundhole at a distance of about 10". The recording is sampled at 44100kHZ, 24 bit in stereo. The resulting raw recording sounds like this:

 

The Fisherman (RAW recording)

 

The hiss should be apparant, but so far I'm enjoying the clarity of the guitar sompared to what I've used in the past. Either I need to tweak my GAIN or LEVEL settings or I have some sort of hum from a power source leaking through.

 

Anyhoo, so far this is just a work in progress and that's the best I've got thus far so I decided to play with it in Audacity and see what I could do with it and below is the result. Tell me what you think so far:

 

The Fisherman (post-production recording)

 

Thanks!

[taylorguitarman]

I tried to download the audio files but got error messages from your server. I love the song and I'd love to hear how you're doing with it. Also take a listen to the audio quality and see if there's anything obvious.

[kwakatak]

Originally posted by taylorguitarman I tried to download the audio files but got error messages from your server. I love the song and I'd love to hear how you're doing with it. Also take a listen to the audio quality and see if there's anything obvious.

 

 

Sorry about that! Chalk it up to being too tired to type correctly: the URL was case sensitive and 1 letter was capitalized!

[taylorguitarman]

Ah, much better. I thought it might be something like that so I tried all lowercase and just browsing the directory but it didn't like that.

Anyways, good work so far on the song, I think it's a very pretty tune and I've got a thing right now for that sort of Celtic stuff. As far as the recording setup, I'd say your issue is largely due to the mic you're using (then secondarily the mixer); it's a dynamic mic and I think you'd get much better results with a condensor like an SP B1 or something similar (there are a plethora of budget mics to pick from). I've encountered the same sort of thing trying to record with an SM57.
Try moving the mic closer more like 4-6in away (or as close as you can to get more volume into the mic) and turn up the gain higher more like 3/4 to almost all the way up. I'd leave the main vol at 0 as pushing it all the way up isn't really going to gain you any quality I don't think (as I'm assuming you're normalizing on the PC).
What sort of soundcard are you using to do the PC recording? That might be contributing as well. Does it sound cleaner through the headphones on the mixer?

[Scodiddly]

The problem is that the 1/4" inputs aren't designed for low-level mic signals. Now if you bought a 1/4"-XLR adapter, turned the phantom switch off, and plugged into the XLR input, you should get a lot more gain and therefore less noise.

[taylorguitarman]

That's a really good idea. I'd be interested in hearing the difference between just using the XLR inputs and the 1/4". I'm guessing you'll still have a bit of hiss but it should be significantly better. I'd don't have a setup like that to try it out on but it'd be good to know and advise other people later.

[daklander]

Yeah, the ATR-20 is a dynamic, not condenser mic. Either go with a condenser mic or, as suggested, purchase a matching transformer/adapter that goes from the 1/4" plug to XLR. If you do that, turn off the phantom power. It's not needed and may be adding, somewhat, to the hiss.

You might also run your output from the rca output jacks into the soundcard instead of the 1/4" output jacks.

Also, get rid of the guitar cord going to the soundcard and use a cable made for it if you stay with the 1/4" output.

[kwakatak]

Thanks! I'm gonna look around for an adaptor because of my budget. I'll start hunting around online for one but if you could point me in the right direction I'd really appreciate it!

[daklander]

This should work for you.

 

GC should also have it.

[kwakatak]

Funny you should mention that! I'm buying this and turning off the phantom power. I was on that very page and had my credit card in hand!

BTW, I established that it was the 1/4" input into Line 1 that was causing the hiss. The hiss was there even when I didn't have the outgoing line to the PC. To test to see if the mic was the culprit I hooked up my electric guitar and amplifier to it with no problem.

[kwakatak]

OK, I ordered the Planet Waves male XLR to 1/4" female adaptor and tested it out last night. The difference was pretty striking for just a $7 investment.

Here's my latest take with the new XLR adaptor. Everything else is the same except I turned the gain down alittle more. The quality is much better, though I still need to either tweak the gain settings or filter out it in Audacity.

This is the raw recording with the mic placed about 6"-8" away from the 14th fret:

Raw recording of "The Fisherman" - August 18

BTW: I still need to learn the ending, but that's only about 20 more seconds of the song.

[Scodiddly]

How to tweak the gain knob:

 

On bigger consoles there's a "solo" button on each channel - when pressed, you can read the channel audio level on one of the main meters. Very handy! But your little Behringer doesn't have that.

 

So, here's what you do. Without getting your computer involved, just set the channel level knob to "0" (straight up, I think - look at the markings) and the big output level slider to "0". Set all the EQ knobs flat. This should produce unity gain all the way from the input preamp to the meter. Now, start playing and look at the meter. You don't want it going above "0", so only the green LEDs should be lighting up. These mixers aren't very forgiving about overload!

 

Now from there, you want to tweak your soundcard inputs to get the best gain structure. You don't say what soundcard you have, but I'd guess that you've got the inputs set all the way up. Try turning them down, see what happens. Ideally you'll be able to get the soundcard peaking at 0dB when the mixer meter is peaking at 0dB, giving the lower noise and also the convenience to being able to roughly set your levels on the mixer.

 

Depending on your soundcard, turning down the inputs may make little or no difference. That's if the manufacturer cheaped out on the input circuitry and the actual hardware input level is just fixed. In that case you could probably cobble something together (find a friend who can solder, or learn yourself) with a couple resistors to pad down the mixer output.

[ddlingling]

excellent playing, absolutely gorgeous song.

is there anywhere i could get the sheet music or tab for this?

btw, the recording sounds great the the last take, theres still a little hiss, but yea try using audacity to filter. is that the program you're using to record?

[kwakatak]

Originally posted by ddlingling excellent playing, absolutely gorgeous song.

Thanks!

is there anywhere i could get the sheet music or tab for this?

This song was featured in the last issue of Fingerstyle Guitar Magazine (issue #57) . It's in DADGAD tuning with a capo on the third fret. The notation is pretty complex (lots of double grace notes) so If you have a good ear for picking out the melody I'd recommend using it only as a rough guide and let your ear do the rest.

btw, the recording sounds great the the last take, theres still a little hiss, but yea try using audacity to filter. is that the program you're using to record?

Yes, I've been using Audacity for about a year now and just do basic single track stuff with it for the most part. It's a free download at http://audacity.sourceforge.net/.

I'd been using one of those cheap teleconferencing omni-directional mics before so this is my first attempt with a the mixer and an uni-directional mic.

[ddlingling]

damn, its on a mag. i was hoping i could bum it off the internet or something.