Loudness - clearity - tinnitus - dynamic range

[RainbowStorm]

As the topic says I hope we can discuss this issue some here at Gearslutz. It's a while since I posted here last time since I have had a two months break from all recording due to my Tinnitus.

First of all, this is my experience with Tinnitus so far:

1. I got diagnosed with having rarely good hearing. You CAN have Tinnitus and have good hearing.

2. Fans of all kinds are the worst possible for Tinnitus, there are fan amplitude limits that when exceeded will make your Tinnitus worse, also depending on the frequency spread.

3. Constant noise/sound is bad for Tinnitus. Fans are almost always constant in amplitude.

4. Not eating, exercising or sleeping well enough OR regularly enough will make the Tinnitus worse.

5. Ears should rest late in the evening.

6. Expect computers to be part of causing your Tinnitus.

7. Resting your ears for a long time is good for Tinnitus.

8. Avoid hard limiting.

To sum up all this, the word is FAN! The holy ground is dB. Be very careful with all your fans in all kinds of contexts! Eliminate all fans if possible. IF you hear fans regularly you should eliminate as much of that noise as you possibly can. Be aware of the fact that as soon as you are in an environment where the sound is constant you are at Tinnitus risk. Important, make sure that no fan noise is being introduced into the signal path as you are recording. Even though I record with a Firewire soundcard I have had a lot of fan noise in the signal, especially when I had a lot of tracks and the CPU is pushed to the limit. Even though you can't hear it even after it is being limited, it is still there and it will be damaging.

So enough about Tinnitus, you get my point, over to the topic!

I am currently thinking about stop limiting my productions completely. But somehow I need to compensate the loss of the perceived clearity when I reduce the overall amplitude. I have several options:

- Lowering the overall mix noise floor
- Choosing different sound sources
- Using fader, EQ and panning techniques
- Using less sound sources in the mix (to reduce frequency masking and avoid having the CPU go to 100% causing more fan noise)

What option do you think one should focus on? I feel that I should focus on them all... I have a pretty high noise floor, I have pretty bad sound sources, I am not using fader/EQ/pan controls efficiently enough and I am often using too many sound sources and effects in the mix.

I am also thinking about start mixing down each track separately (with effects applied on them) to leave the computer as silent as possible during the summing of the tracks through less multi-threading/multi-tasking.

Any thoughts, comments or opinions?!

[Cujo]

Good topic,

May I suggest moving the computer into a closet? I keep mine in one with the door almost closed, although the Mac I am on right now is an old blue G4 and the fan is right next to my ear, I'll put moving it on to do list.

[RainbowStorm]

Originally Posted by Cujo

Good topic,

May I suggest moving the computer into a closet? I keep mine in one with the door almost closed, although the Mac I am on right now is an old blue G4 and the fan is right next to my ear, I'll put moving it on to do list.

Good idea, I haven't tried that so it could help, but from the kind of noise I've experienced it's like it's coming directly from/onto the motherboard and I'm not sure how that's even possible since the firewire connection is digital and it seems a little odd that the firewire connector and its bus would be affected by noise... My thought about that has been that maybe that noise is entering the signal in the firewire -> PCI adapter transfer process, since I'm using a PCI adapter to be able to connect the firewire audio interface to the motherboard that lacks a firewire connector. That would be one theory. In that case I should maybe buy a motherboard that has a firewire connector built-in directly on the board. But is this even likely? There's a point in using a firewire<->pci adapter since it enables you to connect units in a more portable way, but another point with using a firewire connected audio interface is to not get any noise from the fans inside the computer onto the signal, so that concept would not be very transparent if I would get a lot of noise by using a PCI adapter for the firewire connection...

Any thoughts?!