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High Pitched Hum In Recording ???

JamieIsOnline

JamieIsOnline

Guest
Nov 1, 2011
28
3
Manchester, England, UK
#1
I was wondering if anyone could help me. I'm running my dynamic mic through a small mixer so it can be picked up, then through my Behringer guitar link ugc102 which is going directly into mixcraft 6.

I'm getting a high pitched hum when recording which is this: http://bit.ly/1aK1t3P

can anyone help me resolve it - ive read about mic preamps to boost the mic because it hardly picks anything up or could i use my current set up but with a di box - would that help ?

cheers in advance
Jamie
 
#2
Almost certainly the internal sound card in your computer - you didn't say what you were recording on, but that whine is very common with cheap sound cards when they are running with higher gain settings - try sending more level to the recording device and drop the input gain a bit. External audio interfaces don't do this, but most computers costing many hundreds of quid have sound cards/chipsets that cost less than £5!
 
#4
JamieIsOnline said:
I was wondering if anyone could help me. I'm running my dynamic mic through a small mixer so it can be picked up, then through my Behringer guitar link ugc102 which is going directly into mixcraft 6.

I'm getting a high pitched hum when recording which is this: http://bit.ly/1aK1t3P

can anyone help me resolve it - ive read about mic preamps to boost the mic because it hardly picks anything up or could i use my current set up but with a di box - would that help ?

cheers in advance
Jamie
Click to expand...

It would be a lot easier to hear it without playing over it. Crank the input level and re-record it. That's not a grounding problem, but it could be from a noisy stage in the mixer or the UGC102. It's computer-based- I have heard similar sound coming from a network Jukebox in a bar.

What kind of amp and what effects are being used? Put your face close to the speaker(s)- do you hear it? If not, did you hear it before you started recording, or was everything noise-free until playback? If it was quiet, it's likely that the Behringer is noisy. It was only about $40, after all.

FYI- 'hum' is a low frequency sound, not high frequency. In any case, it's called 'oscillation' and "high, medium or low" is needed to distinguish it from other sounds.
 
#5
Are you sure the sound is not produced by the amp (or guitar, or effect pedals)?

I had and MXR Carbon Copy that would produce similar sound on some settings, it would be barely inaudible coming out of the amp, but still loud enough to be pickup by the mic and boosted by the compressor before being recorded in the computer.
 
#6
Also, if you want to hear the way a mic does, plug one ear. Using two ears for hearing makes it easier to locate the source of sounds, but by having two, our brain/ear combination removes a lot of the reflected sound. The emphasis due to the mic's inherent response will often reveal sounds that are hard to hear without headphones, ear buds or high SPL.
 
#7
1958Bassman said:
It would be a lot easier to hear it without playing over it. Crank the input level and re-record it. That's not a grounding problem, but it could be from a noisy stage in the mixer or the UGC102. It's computer-based- I have heard similar sound coming from a network Jukebox in a bar.

What kind of amp and what effects are being used? Put your face close to the speaker(s)- do you hear it? If not, did you hear it before you started recording, or was everything noise-free until playback? If it was quiet, it's likely that the Behringer is noisy. It was only about $40, after all.

FYI- 'hum' is a low frequency sound, not high frequency. In any case, it's called 'oscillation' and "high, medium or low" is needed to distinguish it from other sounds.
Click to expand...

I haven't used any effects on the recording, just through a Jet City 50w combo (for this) on clean channel and on crunch. The only noise I get from my amp is when I have my pedals on so thats why I just played it straight. I have just tried it with the guitar rig software and you can't hear it on clean presets but then when you use the distorted amps it comes back, but the software has a built in noise gate (although not very good). So it could possibly be the behringer ?

If it is what kind of interface would you recommend ? As its only home demos then I don't want to spend huge amounts

and thanks to everyones suggestions so far :)

Jamie
 
#9
JamieIsOnline said:
I haven't used any effects on the recording, just through a Jet City 50w combo (for this) on clean channel and on crunch. The only noise I get from my amp is when I have my pedals on so thats why I just played it straight. I have just tried it with the guitar rig software and you can't hear it on clean presets but then when you use the distorted amps it comes back, but the software has a built in noise gate (although not very good). So it could possibly be the behringer ?

If it is what kind of interface would you recommend ? As its only home demos then I don't want to spend huge amounts

and thanks to everyones suggestions so far :)

Jamie
Click to expand...

Noise gates block noise only when the average level is below a set threshold, but allow everything to pass once the threshold has been exceeded. Also, distortion comes with a cost because any noise from the one stage will be increased from the next. When several gain stages are placed in a series, the resulting noise will be cumulative.

If you record the signal as "hot" as possible, the noise will be less noticeable.

What kind of mic are you using?

This isn't the usual noise from an amp- normally, it's just hiss- this sounds more like digital "hash". Keep the levels high on the front end and when you get to the Master Volume, you can reduce it, to keep from overloading the recording medium. Analog tape has the advantage of being able to handle signal levels that exceed 0VU (Volume Units, shown on the meters used to set levels) by a good amount before the distortion became bad enough to be considered objectionable. The first effect is that the highs become softer and the overall level is compressed. Digital recording doesn't have that luxury- there's no such thing as +1VU, or higher and care must be used to avoid peaks that exceed 0VU because it sounds really, really bad.
 

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