Recording Hiss Removal? Can anyone help?

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Re: Recording Hiss Removal? Can anyone help?

Post by bender »

Vince wrote:
willow13 wrote:what caused the hiss in the first place?? is it an old tape or something
Nope, I was just recording through the laptop (it's acoustic music so I'd rather not plug directly into it).

I've tried using a mike but the adapter wasn't fitting correctly. But even when I've used a mike and a pre amp and so on, I still get a lot of hiss.
From memory you only have dynamic mics (57s and 58s), which will need to be very close to the source to produce a decent level and, even then, will probably require a fair bit of gain to get a clean signal into your laptop. The only way to do that is with a halfway decent preamp and/or audio interface. If you're using the built-in audio via a minijack, it'll be much harder to get a clean recording.

FWIW, any of these would be a great option for you:
http://oceaniaaudio.bigcartel.com/produ ... microphone
http://www.trademe.co.nz/music-instrume ... 770249.htm
http://oceaniaaudio.bigcartel.com/produ ... box-usb-le

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Re: Recording Hiss Removal? Can anyone help?

Post by aliasceiza »

benderissimo wrote:
Vince wrote:
benderissimo wrote:Noise reduction is really tricky- hiss is actually quite broadband and therefore difficult to EQ out. You could try applying a high-frequency shelving EQ cutting at about 6kHz. This will have the effect of pushing the noise 'back' but won't remove it altogether.

I could possibly clean it up for you, Vince. I'm slammed until about Tuesday though.

I vaguely remember you talking about cutting frequencies at 2K but it doesn't seem to make much difference. All that seems to happen is I get hiss at different pitches.
That's what I mean by hiss being broadband- it covers a wide frequency band. If you cut a specific frequency, it still leaves all the others. A shelving EQ will effectively lower everything above a certain frequency point and a Low Pass Filter (LPF) will cut everything above that frequency (ie filtering it out). The best way to use either is to sweep the frequency until you find the right balance between reducing the hiss and affecting the instrument you've recorded.
Vince wrote:If you want to have a tilt at it, that would be fantastic (I don't mind waiting) as long as you tell me what you did afterward.
If I have a go, it'll likely be using izotope RX.

FWIW, standard NR procedure is: select a bit of the recording where you're not playing (ie where all you can hear is the hiss you want to remove), use the 'learn', 'train' or 'profile' function in the NR plug-in (this allows the plug-in to distinguish what is noise and what is not), then select the entire recording and tweak the amount of reduction so that it sounds as natural as possible.
Tried both these methods on Vince's track, the hiss is too much, to reduce it by any worth while level effects the instrument too much, the tracks have a hum at around 89hz and just removing that helps a little, but to take out the hiss you have to bring the filter down so low it kills the high end in the track...a happy balance isn't enough of reduction to bother with.

I didn't spend much time tweaking the noise reduction settings because it still won't be overly worth while, Vince needs to fix it on the way in!

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Re: Recording Hiss Removal? Can anyone help?

Post by Capt. Black »

Maybe not the question you want asked but with all the things suggested and tried, would it be better to just re-record?

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Re: Recording Hiss Removal? Can anyone help?

Post by Vince »

benderissimo wrote:From memory you only have dynamic mics (57s and 58s), which will need to be very close to the source to produce a decent level and, even then, will probably require a fair bit of gain to get a clean signal into your laptop. The only way to do that is with a halfway decent preamp and/or audio interface. If you're using the built-in audio via a minijack, it'll be much harder to get a clean recording.
Oh, I *do* that. I have an old portastudio (Zoom MRS 4) thing that I normally use as a pre amp. This time around I had some problems (the lights kept flashing which, I assume, meant either very dirty power here at home or that the portastudio is on its very last legs) Good recall about the dynamic mikes though.

And yep, thanks to Aliasceiza for having a go, but yeah... even though the noise was removed significantly, a lot of the top end on the instrument came away as well.

I'll look into getting the lights to stop flashing (batteries, perhaps) and try everything again.
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Re: Recording Hiss Removal? Can anyone help?

Post by willow13 »

Capt. Black wrote:Maybe not the question you want asked but with all the things suggested and tried, would it be better to just re-record?
this is where I was heading with my questions, but as ben said I think vince is battling with what he is using to capture the recording.
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Re: Recording Hiss Removal? Can anyone help?

Post by Vince »

willow13 wrote:
Capt. Black wrote:Maybe not the question you want asked but with all the things suggested and tried, would it be better to just re-record?
this is where I was heading with my questions, but as ben said I think vince is battling with what he is using to capture the recording.
Yeah, pretty much. I've even toyed with the idea of adding a few "pokketta-pokketta" 78 RPM sounds just to make it a feature rather than a bug :D
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Re: Recording Hiss Removal? Can anyone help?

Post by willow13 »

Vince wrote:
Yeah, pretty much. I've even toyed with the idea of adding a few "pokketta-pokketta" 78 RPM sounds just to make it a feature rather than a bug :D
thats an option if done right :thumbup:

I recommend getting hold of a condenser mic at some point vince, you won't regret it when it comes to acoustic recording
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Re: Recording Hiss Removal? Can anyone help?

Post by aliasceiza »

Vince wrote:
benderissimo wrote:From memory you only have dynamic mics (57s and 58s), which will need to be very close to the source to produce a decent level and, even then, will probably require a fair bit of gain to get a clean signal into your laptop. The only way to do that is with a halfway decent preamp and/or audio interface. If you're using the built-in audio via a minijack, it'll be much harder to get a clean recording.
Oh, I *do* that. I have an old portastudio (Zoom MRS 4) thing that I normally use as a pre amp. This time around I had some problems (the lights kept flashing which, I assume, meant either very dirty power here at home or that the portastudio is on its very last legs) Good recall about the dynamic mikes though.

And yep, thanks to Aliasceiza for having a go, but yeah... even though the noise was removed significantly, a lot of the top end on the instrument came away as well.

I'll look into getting the lights to stop flashing (batteries, perhaps) and try everything again.
Maybe look at buying sopachrga's 2i2...doesn't sound like your current interface is up to much!

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Re: Recording Hiss Removal? Can anyone help?

Post by bender »

Vince wrote:
benderissimo wrote:From memory you only have dynamic mics (57s and 58s), which will need to be very close to the source to produce a decent level and, even then, will probably require a fair bit of gain to get a clean signal into your laptop. The only way to do that is with a halfway decent preamp and/or audio interface. If you're using the built-in audio via a minijack, it'll be much harder to get a clean recording.
Oh, I *do* that. I have an old portastudio (Zoom MRS 4) thing that I normally use as a pre amp. This time around I had some problems (the lights kept flashing which, I assume, meant either very dirty power here at home or that the portastudio is on its very last legs) Good recall about the dynamic mikes though.
1) Those zoom portastudios have horrendously noisy preamps when running at high levels of gain. If it's having power problems, that will likely be making it worse.
2) Do you connect that straight into your laptop via a minijack cable? Built in sound cards mostly offer very poor signal-to-noise ratios, so there'll be more noise being introduced there, particularly if you're boosting the level within the DAW as well.
3) How close are you getting the mic? I was talking about getting the mic about 3 inches away from the source.

Feel free to send me the track and I'll see what I can do.

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Re: Recording Hiss Removal? Can anyone help?

Post by Vince »

Hmmm... I thought it would be more along the lines of "Oh, just cut out the frequencies at nkh and that should do it".

Ok, looks like I might have to go back to the drawing board, like Wiley Coyote.
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Re: Recording Hiss Removal? Can anyone help?

Post by alanp »

alternating.bit did a youtube vid on how to create dub... with a modular synth... at the start, he lectures on how *adding* hiss is important, and how to do it with a white and pink noise generator, and a fixed filter bank...
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