Affordable Way To Handle Messy Signal

[anna_britbass88]

Hi!

We're getting some (not a ton) of sizzle, interference, air, room noise etc. We can see this noise when we zoom up on the waveform, and editing in silence after the fact is a pain in the patootie.

We know our Rode NT1A is dead quiet (tested @ pro studio) our monster cables are solid, and the MBox Pro is not the offender.

What worked before:

Way back when I got a Line 6 UX2 it came with a software interface called GearBox, the one thing we loved was the channel strip emulators but mostly the gate function - it felt very musical (to our noob ears) and sent a clean signal - plus it didn't seem like it taxed the MacBook Pro.

Well now that we're all grow'd up with our MBox Pro we uninstalled the GearBox app (dumb!) so now we're looking for an affordable replacement to send dead quiet signal into our I/O.

We don't want to use Input Monitoring / ITB solutions within Logic 9 to accomplish this, we'd prefer a rack mounted unit (as to save processing power for tracking - we're @ 5.5ms /64 sample buffer and happy).

We like the dbx 286s - even played with one, so any other suggestions? It's gotta have a gate / expander. Tubes are fun too.

Or is there a dead simple solution - besides working in the vacuum of outer space!

Thanks to all -

[anna_britbass88]

thank you! while that looks very useful I guess we're more or less looking for a preamp / channel strip w/expander gate

[mhs2xs]

Originally Posted by anna_britbass88

thank you! while that looks very useful I guess we're more or less looking for a preamp / channel strip w/expander gate

Sorry, thought it was electrical noises you were having issues with.

I used to try to gate to disc (Toms), and it didn't work out so well. Took forever to attempt to get it so it didn't bug me. So, if you're intent on doing that, hope you have better luck than I did. Zooming in on the wave form and maybe hearing it ever so slightly in a cranked up solo'd track is, well, annoying yes. But you eventually have to decide if it's worth all the extra effort if you can't hear it in the mix.

One of the most perfect drum tracks I ever played in my life bugged the crap out of me because, as I reached the end of the song, one side of my headphones started coming off and you could hear the click and guitar in the OHD's when my kit was solo'd up. But when you turned the rest on, you'd never ever hear it.

[anna_britbass88]

maybe I'm being too AR...lol

It's just annoying as hell to have my brother crying from the vocal booth (aka closet - lol) about the swishes and air movement. He never complained when we used that silly simple GearBox software gate.

Now that I'm starting to understand, high / low pass filters, notching the EQ etc for post clean up I was just thinking why not get as close to dead perfect as possible when tracking?

Doesn't low level noise grow exponentially as track # increases?

[anna_britbass88]

/doh!

seek and ye shall find.

Using a noise gate with an expensive preamp?

its very very dangerous to gate to tape.... especially since its easy to fix after the fact.

well poo.

[mhs2xs]

Originally Posted by anna_britbass88

/doh!

seek and ye shall find.

Using a noise gate with an expensive preamp?



well poo.

Yeah, like I said, you're gonna hear all kinds of stuff. Grunting, breathing, even clothing makes noises that get picked up. I don't know about "dangerous" in our low end scenarios. But it's best to get a good take/signal using good techniques and worry about the "extra noises" afterwards, rather than trying to process the signal on the way in.