Hisssssss

[NaeDae]

Ok, so I'm using a condenser mic that came with the PreSonus AudioBox kit, and I'm kind of sick of the hissing it seems to be making. I've been trying to EQ it away, and I've messed with different compression, but in the end I just feel like there's not much I can do about it. If the vocal is loud, there's an obnoxious hissing in the background. If the track is loud, then the hissing is not audible, but I can't figure out WHY it's doing that and it's been bugging me for a while. I'm thinking about a new mic all together.

SO, I plugged in my old Samson Meteor Mic and it turns out I was right. The background noise with the Samson mic is more mid-ranged and less hissy. I have no idea how this is, but at least I know another mic can change this problem.

MY QUESTION: What mic should I get that's less likely to hiss? Also, is there anything I'm missing with the one I'm using now?

[cosmicdolphin]

I've never really had an issue with hiss with any mic I've used, have you been able to check it against another copy of the same mic to establish there's no fault with it?

Usually I find any hiss comes from other parts of the chain like the mic pre but I guess if your Samson mic sounds fine then that can be eliminated.

Is this hiss really audible in context of the overall mix? In the old days we had tape hiss to deal with which was way louder than anything coming from the mic or pre-amp. But it also kinda helped glue the whole thing together in a weird way.

I've used plugins to take hiss off recordings of acoustic guitars which are solo pieces when compression has really brought it up, I used the Waves one personally but there are others.

Mark

[Len911]

Presonus mic. the 48v phantom power button is pressed? Mic cable is xlr not trs going into preamp?

The noise you describe, hissing, I would think would be more problematic if you have an extremely low output mic that you need to turn the gain way up on the preamp. The impedance, 200ohm mic to 1200ohm preamp is a standard matching.

The Samson is a usb mic, so I don't think you've plugged it into the Presonus preamp. Different signal chain.

I would be surprised that you would hear anything if the phantom power button wasn't pressed. I noticed that the Presonus audiobox kit doesn't come with a mic cable, and with those new hybrid xlr/trs jacks it might be easy to use the wrong cable. xlr for microphones, trs for instruments like a guitar which is low z, instrument input has more gain than mic but less than a line input.

Mic cable NOT to use
http://www.musiciansfriend.com/micropho ... -mic-cable

Mic cable should look like this
http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/ ... aQodevIJfQ

That should be a starting place to troubleshoot.

[Len911]

The hiss is for the most part circuit noise. Self-noise is the spec.
http://www.neumann.com/homestudio/en/wh ... oise-level

Once it's there, anything that amplifies the signal will also amplify or effect the hiss. The problem with eq, is that it will also affect the vocal or instrumental signal. The compromise is that it's not noticeable when there is a vocal or instrumental signal. You can setup and use a gate, that lowers the level when the signal voltage drops below the threshold, can be tricky sometimes to set up. The easiest, but most time consuming method is to slice the audio after the vocal or instrument signal and adjust the volume on each quiet section snippet. If you insert silence on the quiet snippets, it will sound odd, so the key is to adjust so that the gain change is not noticeable, so you will still have a little noise.

[mojobone]

Your perceived hiss problem could be about the mic, maybe the preamp, possibly the room, or induced high-frequency hum from something else in the room. (or maybe you just have too many snakes on your ground plane) Try swapping some stuff in and out; the process of elimination is your friend. In my tracking room, the ceiling fan occasionally imparts some tremolo to guitars, but sometimes it's more about the air in the room, as opposed to the circuitry.

[Len911]

or maybe you just have too many snakes on your ground plane)

It's the rattles I worry about most!

[NaeDae]

Hey just got back from vacation and decided I'd just switch the condenser mic (PreSonus M7) out for my other mic (SHURE SM58). It really WAS just the mic itself causing the annoying self-noise, cause it sounds a lot quieter now. WAY more manageable.

To give you an idea of how bad it was, no matter how I set the noisegate, the hiss would just TSS whenever I started talking/singing. I couldn't do anything quiet without the HISS being noticeable. But it's way better now.

Thanks for the help guys!

[Len911]

Hey just got back from vacation and decided I'd just switch the condenser mic (PreSonus M7) out for my other mic (SHURE SM58). It really WAS just the mic itself causing the annoying self-noise, cause it sounds a lot quieter now. WAY more manageable.

To give you an idea of how bad it was, no matter how I set the noisegate, the hiss would just TSS whenever I started talking/singing. I couldn't do anything quiet without the HISS being noticeable. But it's way better now.

Thanks for the help guys!

Now that you've narrowed it down to the mic, and the toleration level for hiss, keep in mind that a condenser mic in general is more sensitive than a dynamic. I would presume the ps-m7 is a Chinese condenser, often associated with a harsh high end in general, obviously not a Neumann.

I'm not really sure about the usefulness of noise gates with the advent of modern daws?? Surely there's something.

[NaeDae]

Hey just got back from vacation and decided I'd just switch the condenser mic (PreSonus M7) out for my other mic (SHURE SM58). It really WAS just the mic itself causing the annoying self-noise, cause it sounds a lot quieter now. WAY more manageable.

To give you an idea of how bad it was, no matter how I set the noisegate, the hiss would just TSS whenever I started talking/singing. I couldn't do anything quiet without the HISS being noticeable. But it's way better now.

Thanks for the help guys!

Now that you've narrowed it down to the mic, and the toleration level for hiss, keep in mind that a condenser mic in general is more sensitive than a dynamic. I would presume the ps-m7 is a Chinese condenser, often associated with a harsh high end in general, obviously not a Neumann.

I'm not really sure about the usefulness of noise gates with the advent of modern daws?? Surely there's something.

Do you have any suggestions for good mics with less high-end self-noise?

[cardell]

Cool, I'm glad you solved the problem!

My 2 cents:

I swear I'm not being sarcastic here, because I had this [or a similar] situation myself:

The hiss can/might be a sound in the room, that you can simply hear better through the amplification of the mic.
In my case it was the computer fan.

These days, when I track vocals, I use my laptop because it's significantly quieter.

Stuart