Noise during playback even when silent?

Special Interest Groups Recording Techniques
1

Hi everyone! I’m hoping you can help. Sorry if this is something obvious.

I’m using a mic (it was one that came with a karaoke game). Oddly enough, it’s the clearest mic I’ve ever owned since I’m not a pro so have never bought a mic for anything. I read some places that using a usb mic can produce better quality than doing it from the soundcard because of interference or something. I tested that out.

I plugged the mic into the pc’s sound card and just sat it in the middle of the room and recorded. Then spoke a little. When I looked at the waveform, I could already see there was a ton of activity during the part when I wasn’t speaking, the waves were about 1/3 to 1/2 the size of the waves of my regular speaking voice. I then plugged it into my usb adapter to use it with the usb port instead and did the same thing. This time, the part when I wasn’t speaking looked like a flat line, so I was sold lol

Anyway, I played it back and heard a weird sort of medium to high pitched buzz. It wasn’t very loud, just loud enough for me to want it gone. I zoomed into the waveform more to look at the flat line. There WERE waves, they were just REALLY tiny, so I wondered if that’s what was making the noise. To check it, I selected the area and used “generate silence” on it. Then I clicked play again and STILL heard the noise on playback.

Any thoughts on what might be causing it?

I’m wondering if it’s my headset. I thought it might be my mic at first, but I played some of the professional (famous bands, coldplay, etc) mp3s I have on my pc that had parts with no music in them and I could still hear that same noise.

If it’s the headset, I’m wondering if there’s anything I can do to minimize that sound since I ONLY hear it when playing things back? If not, I guess I’ll just have to work taking that noise into account when trying to remove noise that’s actually in the recording.

I have no money now, but I foresee breaking my headset at some point in the future lol So whenever it goes kaput, any suggestions on a really good set of studio headphones to buy? I don’t have a pro studio, but I still want quality headphones that block everything out and are good at keeping the audio isolated to just me hearing it.

The ones I have now are um… sony dynamic studio headphones mdr-v150. These have served me really well, a lot of insolation, but if that little noise is being caused by them and there are headphones out there that don’t do that, I’m willing to upgrade.

Thanks!

2

<<<I selected the area and used “generate silence” on it. Then I clicked play again and STILL heard the noise on playback. >>>

We were doing really well until you said that.

You know you can press the Spacebar to Play and Stop, right? You don’t have to keep clicking on the green Play button. Many editors work like that.

Open up one of your live performances, select a chunk in the middle and Edit > Silence. If you play through that segment, is there noise in your headphones?

If you play through the “silent” segment and hear noise, then the computer playback system is in trouble.

I have those headphones, by the way. I bought them in Hawaii and I’m very pleased with them. I’ve used Sennheisers, Koss, Sony, etc. etc… That model and a very early Sennheiser HD414 are the only two I can use for a long time. I can’t tell immediately whether or not they’re going to make my ears hurt – only after using them for a while which makes buying headphones a chore.

Koz

3

Oh sorry, I think I typed it in a confusing way, I’m sorry. When I say I clicked play I mean I hit the spacebar, it’s play/stop for all software I use, even video editing, so I’ve just gotten use to calling it play instead of saying I hit the spacebar.

I hope I didn’t post in the wrong forum, but I’m using Windows XP and Audacity 1.3. What you said is what I did. I generated a silent segment in the track (by clicking “generate → silence” which as far as I knew does the same thing as Edit → Silence Audio") and then played back the silent segment and I still heard the noise I’m describing.

So you’re saying it’s not my headphones, it’s my computer? Is it a hardware issue like a poor sound card or is it something that I can fix by changing the playback audio settings on my pc, updating drivers, etc?

I like the headphones too. They’re pretty good, though they do start to hurt my ears after about an hour, but I can deal with it.

4

<<<I generated a silent segment in the track (by clicking “generate → silence” which as far as I knew does the same thing as Edit → Silence Audio") and then played back the silent segment and I still heard the noise I’m describing.>>>

Edit > Silence reduces the existing sound to zero. Generate > Silence makes a new show clip and pushes everything out of the way to make room for it. They result in different show durations.

<<<So you’re saying it’s not my headphones, it’s my computer?>>>

It’s not the headphones. If you play anything else on your machine do you get the noise?

Koz

5

Yeah, I hear it when I playback stuff out of Audacity too but I guess it was never as noticeable to me because other stuff usually doesn’t have silent spots, but I checked some mp3s in winamp that I remembered having quiet parts or parts where there isn’t any music and I can hear it. It’s not a consistent buzz, it sort of pops and fizzes periodically, perhaps along with my CPU, I don’t know.

It’s such a faint noise that it’s not really the biggest deal, but because it’s something I only hear on playback, it would help if I could change something so that I don’t hear it at all. If not, I’ll just deal with it.

6

Ok, based on your feeling that it was my computer, I went and updated all of my audio drivers just in case, then I went back into Audacity, generated silence again, and now I don’t hear that noise anymore, I’m so excited!!! lol

Thank you so much.

7

<<<I’m so excited>>>

And you just can’t hide it?
Are you about to lose control?
Do you think you like it?

Suitable apologies to the Pointer Sisters.

Koz