Hissing Noise with Shure SM7B

[boylevoices]

Hello,

I have been experiencing major issues with my setup. I am not very educated in this field, so I apologize in advance if I'm being overly specific here. I use the Shure SM7B along with a Golden Age Pre 73 mk III Preamp. I also use a CL-1 Cloud Lifter. Everything is connected and plugged into the blue line in port in the back of the desktop. I tried using the pink port, but this only made the hissing noise louder. No matter how I adjust the gain and output, the hissing noise is always present.

The settings on the preamp are included below:

Mic/Line: Line is selected.

DI: Not selected.

HP1/HP2/Off: Off is selected.

AIR1/AIR2/Off: Off is selected.

48V: Activated

Low-Z: Not selected.

Vintatge Pre-Amplifier: Selected.

I have tried using the setup without the cloud lifter and without the phantom power, but I still get the hissing noise. I thought it could be the microphone, but I tested it out at a friend's house that has the exact same setup, and his does the same thing. I feel like there's a possibility my computer is causing it, or some kind of setting I have selected?

I have attached a clip of the noise I hear everytime I attempt to record within Audacity. In this example, The gain is set at 30. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

[Trebor]

I have attached a clip of the noise I hear everytime I attempt to record within Audacity.
In this example, The gain is set at 30. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Attachments Bad noise.wav (875.98 KiB)

That noise floor is only -68dB, you're not going to get much better than that without using a noise-gate.

Try generating a silent WAV file and listening to that ...



If you can still hear a hiss when playing that a silent file, the "Bad noise" does not originate from the audio-file,
e.g. could be hiss added by the your speaker/headphone amplifier.

[kozikowski]

You could be listening wrong. You're not supposed to be "Diving for Noise."

If you produce a forum test sound clip from here ...

http://www.kozco.com/tech/audacity/Test ... _Clip.html

... and apply the audiobook mastering from here ...

https://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Audiobook_Mastering

You are supposed to listen to the voice and set your speaker or headphone volume for comfortable listening. Then, without touching anything else, roll back the clip to the room tone at the beginning and listen to that.

I suspect you are cranking up the speaker or headphone volume very high to listen to the noise. That's not how it's measured. I can make any microphone sound terrible by doing that.

Koz

[kozikowski]

One other note. The SM7B is a Dynamic (moving coil) microphone and does not take phantom power (48v), but the Lifter does. So if you take the Lifter out, you should turn Phantom Power off.

Koz

[alkaline_ice]

Well, there is an added benefit of jacking up the volume to listen to the room noise. If you listen to your recording so loud, you can hear the really, -really- quiet things that disrupt your recordings. Like crickets outside the window, a cat meowing, airplanes overhead.

Ironically, I'm jealous of your "bad noise." I wish my noise floor was that quiet.

[kozikowski]

I wish my noise floor was that quiet.

What he said.

Koz