Hi, After I have laid down 2 or 3 tracks (mostly keyboard), there is a hissing sound on playback at the start and presumably all the way through. Can I get rid of it? If not, how do I prevent this? Recording level? Dont know. Thanks
It is normal (unavoidable) for there to be some amount of hiss when recording. The main part of the job when dealing with hiss, is to minimise it in the recording.
All audio hardware creates some hiss. Cheap equipment will usually produce more hiss than expensive professional equipment. To minimise the hiss from the equipment that you have, the main thing to do is to take care over the levels. From the sound source (your keyboard), through the signal chain (mixer / effects / sound card / … / computer), ensure that the levels are kept reasonably high, but not so high that they cause clipping / distortion. If the recorded track is too loud for the mix, then you can reduce the level after recording, which will also reduce the hiss in that track.
When you have your tracks recorded as cleanly as possible, then you can use editing (cut out the “silent” parts so they are not contributing to overall noise) and processing (see here: https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/noise_reduction.html and here: https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/alternative_noise_reduction_techniques.html) to bring the noise level down lower.
Important point: Prevention is much better than cure.
ensure that the levels are kept reasonably high, but not so high that they cause clipping / distortion. If the recorded track is too loud for the mix…
If you ever wondered what the recording engineer did…
Koz