The Song Fight Bulletin Board

The Sober Irishman wrote: Mike Lamb: [...] you definitely need an interface to cut back on that bus noise.

Noise has been absolutely plaguing me. Unfortunately, I have to record in a relatively noisy environment - my Mac sounds like it's about to take off half the time. The guitar is recorded using a Dean Markley pro-mag acoustic pickup run through an ADA MP-1 to my Motu 828. Most of the noise on the guitar track is being generated by inductive hum from my computer & monitor, but the ADA is adding its fair share. The noise on the vox is being added by ambient room noise, mostly the Mac, which I can't turn off because it's running Digital Performer..

A lot of this stuff I know I can deal with in various ways, and I will when I move my studio to another, quieter, room, but some of it I'm stuck with. I am curious by your terminology: "need an interface." What did you mean?

Is there some studio magic I should be looking at to minimize the effect of noise? I've tried gates and de-essers, both of which make things sound worse overall.

Thanks,
Mike Lamb

Pardon me on that comment - on that quick listen I really thought you may have been running your mic direct into your soundcard. Your 828 is an interface, that was my ear lying to me.

I'll listen again and see if I can fish out some of the problems. Otherwise, there's plenty of threads in the archive on this subject. "The silent recorder" was one fluffy started, and searching other relevant terms should help as well.

Think about draping some towels behind the mac. In the room I had in my house in Pennsylvania, I actually nailed/tacked a thick towel to the wall behind my computer. It significantly cut down on the fan noise.

JB

Has anyone ever tried this:

After all is said and done, and you have all the tracks recorded, record one more track of just room noise; just hit record and be really quiet/still. Then phase invert the track and mix it in with the rest of the tracks. It *should* phase-cancel most of the ambient noise in the song, right?

The reason I ask if anyone tried it is because I was thinking of trying it, and don't want to waste my time if it doesn't work.

Sven wrote:After all is said and done, and you have all the tracks recorded, record one more track of just room noise; just hit record and be really quiet/still. Then phase invert the track and mix it in with the rest of the tracks. It *should* phase-cancel most of the ambient noise in the song, right?

God no. It would, however, double your noise.

I recommend a) getting a hot level before you hit your A/D converters, b) place your mics to best take advantage of their most-likely-cardioid pickup pattern, and c) use a gate or expander on every track (except overheads, if that applies to you).

And if you do all this already and you still have too much noise, switch to a genre that requires no recording. I recommend Robo-Voice Electronica.

Sven, the reason why that doesn't work is that the noise is always changing (thus, why it is called noise). Some noise reduction can be done with Fourier transforms, but it's a hard problem and it's not going to be solved that way.

A laptop makes a good recording studio since they're generally much quieter, but that solution might not be good for everyone

Is it possible in Macs to replace the case fan? Or even the whole enclosure with a silent enclosure? I know it can be done with PCs. I have one by Antec now and it's excellent.
-bill

c) use a gate or expander on every track (except overheads, if that applies to you)

This is the first and only thing that came to mind when I read this thread title. Cubase has a damn good (from my limited experience) noise gate/limiter/compressor combo plug in that came with the program. I've never used a gate with such fine tuning, I love it.
Of course, there is a difference between what I record and say, John Benjamin. I'm dirty anyway, where as JB is clean. So if you make clean music, I guess it gets tougher in production.
After all has been done to limit your surrounding recorded noise, rely on your wonderful studio tools.

JB's suggestion does a surprisingly good job of cutting down computer fan noise. You should definitely try that, as it's cheap and easy. If your computer is the cause of most of your audio noise, that alone might be enough. (As for electrically generated noise, if you're still using a CRT you should obviously look into getting an LCD.)

My G5 is very noisy, and as far as I'm aware you can't easily replace the fans like with G4s. Ken has recommended to me a couple of possible solutions. This one is a cheap DIY project to make a little enclosure for your mic:

http://digitalprosound.digitalmedianet. ... p?id=89503

These three next items wrap around behind a mic, eliminating room noise (CPU fan, street noise, neighbors, etc. etc.) to some degree, so you can record vocals/amps/etc. Unfortunately, they're not super cheap ($220 or $300), but they claim to be quite effective:

RealTraps Portable Vocal Booth ($300)
http://www.realtraps.com/p_pvb.htm

SE Electronics Reflexion Filter ($300)
http://www.zzounds.com/item--SEERF

SM Pro Audio Mic thing ($220)
http://www.zzounds.com/item--STOMTG

I've been looking into this lately and haven't figured out yet which way to go.

Still have the packing box your mac came in? Open one end, and put the box over the cpu, like an oversized cardboard rubber... though that's predicated on your having the space around the cpu to do that.

Lining it with towels/t-shirts/whatever will cut the noise down further, while still leaving some room for the air to circulate.

Though you should only do that while recording, them boys do like to breathe, heh.

Lots of cool ideas here, thanks for the feedback. I'm definitely going to look into soundproofing the Mac. I have a small closet that I can adapt for this using some egg foam, so I'll give that a shot.

I wasn't able to find the "silent recorder" thread mentioned by Sober, but I did find another post of his with an amusing tale of a 3/4" hole in the wall:

http://songfight.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1214

Some good ideas in there too. One of the other things I was looking at, and maybe some of you guys have suggestions, was remote control surfaces for Digital Performer. I am drooling over this: Mackie Control Universal Pro

That's a ways off in the budget though. Anyone have any experiences with other (cheaper) control surfaces for DP? I mostly just need play/record/stop/rewind and maybe punch in/out.

-Mike Lamb

Bome's midi translator.
http://www.bome.com/midi/translator/

I have it plugged into this
http://www.artproaudio.com/products.asp ... e=91&id=21
which I got for $10 at a pawn shop, and mr Bome only wants a postcard.

Anything that sends midi signals will work, and the program just converts midi signals into keystrokes. As long as your DAW supports hotkeys and stuff, you're set. 1 25 foot midi cable, 1 3/4 inch hole, and... rock on!

I don't know about DP but Cubase (SX 3 anyway) lets you control stop/start/record/etc. using any MIDI controller, with some configuration.

Really? You mean I didn't have to mess around with the translator program?
What a waste of a postcard...

I'm a little late on this, but when I was using my old G3, I'd put it in a closet, got a long video cable and a usb extender for the keyboard, and ran them out under the door. It would get pretty warm after awhile when I kept the door fully closed, but I'd only close it fully if I was doing vocals or acoustic guitar.