GuitarGuy08
Well-known member
Hello all,
How much background noise do you find acceptable when recording guitar? I find that if I isolate my tracks, even on the clean channels, I can hear the background hiss of the amp. If I am using the built in recording on the amp and bypass the speaker cabinet, there is zero hum or hiss that can be heard. The point of this project is to mic multiple speakers for clean, crunch, and drive, so direct recording is the opposite of what I am wanting to do. If I put the amp into low power mode, the sound is basically non-existent, but when you have it on the full 25w, it is there. I know it's a 25w tube amp and it is pretty darn loud, even at volume on 3-4. Maybe this is just a standard tube amp standby noise/hiss. It can increase with the volume knob/pots but not really, there is always an idle noise.
The sound is very, very low overall as far as that goes but still, just curious what is an 'acceptable' level of hiss or hum from an amp on a clean setting. What do other channels do? When I listen to 'unedited' speaker comparison videos, even when I know they have to have hiss from the amp, I don't hear it.
I do not have drums or anything else on the tracks, as I wanted the speaker comparisons to just be direct guitar tones. I am guessing the sound just overtakes the hiss in the environment and that's why it isn't heard on the other speaker demos I've checked out? Maybe I have this cranked higher than is even reasonable and am being too picky?
I may have to record some clips to upload here to see if the background noise is acceptable or not.
I tried using my DAW to basically rate the dB readings at different points but man is that time consuming, especially if you roll in different tubes to achieve a quiter sound.
Anyway, any advice or knowledge is appreciated. I know I never worried about this when I was a studio guitarist and the tracks always came out great sounding, I never even thought about hiss, though it was surely there.
How much background noise do you find acceptable when recording guitar? I find that if I isolate my tracks, even on the clean channels, I can hear the background hiss of the amp. If I am using the built in recording on the amp and bypass the speaker cabinet, there is zero hum or hiss that can be heard. The point of this project is to mic multiple speakers for clean, crunch, and drive, so direct recording is the opposite of what I am wanting to do. If I put the amp into low power mode, the sound is basically non-existent, but when you have it on the full 25w, it is there. I know it's a 25w tube amp and it is pretty darn loud, even at volume on 3-4. Maybe this is just a standard tube amp standby noise/hiss. It can increase with the volume knob/pots but not really, there is always an idle noise.
The sound is very, very low overall as far as that goes but still, just curious what is an 'acceptable' level of hiss or hum from an amp on a clean setting. What do other channels do? When I listen to 'unedited' speaker comparison videos, even when I know they have to have hiss from the amp, I don't hear it.
I do not have drums or anything else on the tracks, as I wanted the speaker comparisons to just be direct guitar tones. I am guessing the sound just overtakes the hiss in the environment and that's why it isn't heard on the other speaker demos I've checked out? Maybe I have this cranked higher than is even reasonable and am being too picky?
I may have to record some clips to upload here to see if the background noise is acceptable or not.
I tried using my DAW to basically rate the dB readings at different points but man is that time consuming, especially if you roll in different tubes to achieve a quiter sound.
Anyway, any advice or knowledge is appreciated. I know I never worried about this when I was a studio guitarist and the tracks always came out great sounding, I never even thought about hiss, though it was surely there.
Sorry but I really love that piece of gear.