Recording Tip – Minimizing Noise with Good Levels
Some of the noise in recordings can come from your equipment itself. Most professional equipment is rated for what amount of self-noise or noise floor it has. One mistake that many beginners make essentially introduces more background hiss than necessary by recording at levels that are too week.
Any professional recording device should have some sort of indication of what the recording level is. In the analog days this was a peak meter with a needle that would swing left to right, many times today it’s a digital meter of some sort.
The trick is to set your recording levels as loud as possible without clipping (or overloading). Overloading the equipment with too high a sound pressure level can lead to distorted sounds referred to as clipping. You might say, “well I don’t want any distortion so I’m not going to be recording it that hot”… well then you run the risk of introducing the self noise of the equipment. If you “play it safe” and set VERY low levels then you’ll likely need to normalize the content after it’s recorded. In this process the background noise is amplified along with the content. (In this case it’s usually background hissing.)
All electronic equipment makes noise and if you record at too low a level (and adjust the volume up later) you make that expensive low-noise equipment just as noisy as some of the older tape-based equipment.
So, set levels when you start recording as LOUD as possible without clipping.
(NO This doesn’t mean you have to MONITOR the music that loud – just make sure whatever recording device you use has the hottest input signal it can stand without clipping.)
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