Noise during recording

Sipe · Post by **Sipe** » Wed Oct 19, 2005 4:22 am

I'm not sure if you all will be able to help me with this, but it's been bugging me, and you guys (gals?) give good advice.

I recently aquired a Mac Powerbook G4, which I use solely for my musical purposes. I also bought a mixer with USB to record to the mac. The two work fine together, so i know that isnt a problem. The issue at hand is that in the background of the tracks I lay, there is a noise that is sort of static, but isn't really. (you can make it by turning up the voume on your computer very high when nothing is going on.) I can't figure out how to get rid of it, and I cannot put up tracks for review/ burn CDs of my music if the quality is sub par. So my question to you all is: How does one eliminate this problem? All the tracks i've listened to on here have sounded great.

Thank you for you help.

dsat · Post by **dsat** » Wed Oct 19, 2005 3:46 pm

there's always going to be some noise, you can reduce it by processing the parts through a noise reduction plug-in, i like the sonic foundry on
i think steinberg has also a denoiser

but it's important to do that for every part that is a bit noisy in the mix, not on the entire track, the result will be better

eq-ing can also help to reduce noise

once your track is on vinyl, you will hear some more noise

mimusic · Post by **mimusic** » Fri Oct 21, 2005 12:00 pm

what always creates noise in my setup is when I have my laptop plugged in the same power socket as my drum computers. when I just plug the laptop power in another socket or work on the battery the noise is gone.
maybe try that?

cheers,

mimusic

Renze · Post by **Renze** » Fri Oct 21, 2005 12:43 pm

I think mimusic is right. A lot of laptop manufacturers ground the laptop to the USB port. I don't know if Apple does this, but if so, the result is a lot of static/noise when you use a USB audio interface, if you use a grounded power socket. The solution is to either use the laptop on the battery, plug it in an ungrounded wall socket or put sticky tape on the power plug to tape off the ground parts.

Bobby Raven · Post by **Bobby Raven** » Fri Oct 21, 2005 12:58 pm

Hi, mate I would try to avoid using denoisers etc where possible and try to elimate the problem from the recording side.

Need more info! What are you recording, what are you recording from / into etc. What mixer do you have, what packages etc are you using on the Powerbook?

BR