How much room noise / ambient noise do you tolerate?

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

I'm doing a bit of studio remodeling and rewiring. I record using Adobe Audition so I have the neat little meter across the bottom of the screen. When I set the gains so that my voice regularly peaks at -9, has little punch peaks up to -6 and maybe one or two spikes at -1 to -3, I notice that system noise with the mic out of the circuit (Phantom power off) is about -57, system noise in the card (preamp unplugged) is -53, but with the mic live, the room noise is in that range also.

The first question you should have is: if the equipment noise is at that level, how do you know what the ROOM AMBIANT noise is? For test purposes I create a "mic off" silent section of 20 seconds or so and use that to let Audition "capture" the noise sample and remove the 'equipment noise sample' to clean the audio section with voice... including some silent sections. I figure the silent sections with the 'equipment noise' removed is the "sound of the room". And when I use gain adjustment to boost the "room noise" about 30 or 40 dB, the sound is obviously room noise including the computer fan.

A "signal to noise ratio" of 45 to 50 dB is hardly noticeable under normal playback conditions. But the Perfectionist Gene that flows in my blood says: Maybe we could do better.

Who else out their has a brain as warped as mine? How quiet can I hope go get my room? I has some bass-trap materials on the way. Maybe I can take out some of the low frequency standing noise... including the computer fan.

 

[Denny E.]

I too like the ambient noise floor in my studios as low as possible. Most fans are just intolerable. I've even gone as far as remounting the transformers in most of my rack equipment just to keep it out of the signal. The noise floors in both my voice booth and control rooms at normal speaking distance away from the microphone and running very light compression, is about -60db in most situations.

Dennis

 

[jefflaurence]

I still love the old Valley People "Dyna Mite" expander. It clamps down on any left over room noise, and also can deter some of the reflected room "echo" it's old, but there is a nice software version of it.

We have been liking the auralex tiles on the parallel facing walls, and two small bass traps in opposing corners. Also a thermal drape (bed bath and beyond) on the wall directly behind the mic is a great damper, but sometimes requires a very slight upper midrange boost at around 7k-9k

Equipment noise is the worst offender, if it is mechanical noise it has to be isolated somehow. If it is electronic in nature..it may come down to upgrading sound cards, or more robust USB cabling. I have one on a Mac that picks up hard drive whine...it was driving us nuts. We ended up buying Monster USB cables..and it was gone!

 

[[email protected]]

You didn't mention your sound card...but from what I've seen a -57 noise level is what most low budget sound cards produce ....the Pro Level sound cards or USB Interfaces give -90 or better.

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

You didn't mention your sound card...but from what I've seen a -57 noise level is what most low budget sound cards produce ....the Pro Level sound cards or USB Interfaces give -90 or better.

You pushed me right over the edge with that one! I upgraded from my internal sound card to a PreSonus external device that combines pre-amp and conversion to digital in a box better than what I had. Yes, with the mic off or unplugged, noise is down -87 or better, and I am still getting used to what sounds like a bit of equalization change which is actually the extended flatness of response... I think.

With the mic on, room noise (plus internal mic noise?) brings me back to -55 to -60 in noise which Noise Reduction in Audition will strain out nicely. That still leaves me with the question: Even with the best of equipment, and with a reasonably well treated studio.... what is a realistic target for acceptable ROOM NOISE that we just have to learn to live with.

I am building some acoustical panels which probably won't do much of anything for that standing room noise, but will hopefully take away that part of room noise which is audible as slap-back and unpleasant reverb. (Mine is already down to a point that the average listener would not notice that bouncing sound was in the room. Only us audio perfectionists notice and measure it. ;D

 

[Emmett1057]

If I disengage all processing, an open mic in my room sits at -70 to -72. With a little bit of hardware expansion, -90.

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

If I disengage all processing, an open mic in my room sits at -70 to -72. With a little bit of hardware expansion, -90.

Yeah! My goal is a number in that -70 range.

I am waist-deep in remodeling my space and healing a computer that crapped-out on me. I've been out in the garage this afternoon staining some little decorative gutters that will run part way around the room as a place to put wires. I am tired of wires laying in the floor all disorganized.

Now that I have some new gear in place, as soon as I find the soldering iron I am going to take an XLR plug and put a 150 ohm resister across the signal terminals and plug it in where the mic goes. That should tell me what noise my audio chain has built in and what noise is in the room... or a product of the mic itself?

O.K. What "residual noise" are some of the rest of you getting with an open mic and your lips zippered shut?

 

[BobSacamano]

a lot depends on the mic..my Rode NTG-3 can get close to -70...but with my Neumann TLM-103, in the exact same spot, the noise floor jumps to the -55 range...

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

There will be no one single correct answer to my original question. Thanks Bob. My studio renovation is winding down. I knew this the day I first asked the question: coming up with a noise level normally means "noise relative to program content". If you are doing radio production which is up-beat, in your face, the output of your mouth (program content) is going to require/allow setting the input gain lower, which takes the noise down.

If you are doing narrations as in audio books, the output of your mouth (program content) may be very soft, very expressive but soft, and the input gain will need to be set a bit higher which brings the room noise up.

I bailed out of the forum for just a moment and ran a test of my current set-up: The little ribbon style meter across the bottom of Audition flutters back and forth in a -53 to -56 range. It is a rather "coherent, steady noise" and one pass of the noise reduction feature in Audition takes in down somewhere south of -100. I have the gain turned up a bit since I speak a bit softly in doing book narrations.

I may have a problem the other direction. I am working with an outfit that goes to some length in their instructions about how to handle those places where you edit something out which may end up leaving pure science. The ask that we keep a sample of "room tone" around so fill in those dead spots. I have no room tone! At -100 or better, how would you tell electronic silence from really, really low room noise?

All of that to say: I am tickled pink with what I have done to my studio space (and my audio hardware). I may have trouble finding people to buy my voice work, but it won't be because of distracting noise in the recording. It's just this $89.95 voice I have.

Thanks for all the input.

Oh, the audio hardware? I packed away my pre-amp and M-audio Delta series card and set in place a PreSonus AudioBox 22VSL. It seems to be more than adequate for my needs. (We're back to the $89.95 voice again! ;D )

I have only one complaint at this point: I have always had sound cards that you could adjust for proper mic input and a good listening level on the speakers in playback. Record, stop, playback. Just click right there on the screen. No external switches. No messing with volume controls. This little device will go into feedback if you don't turn the monitor output down during record, then turn it back up while turning down the input gain while listening to play back. Apparently PreSonus didn't anticipate some of us radio types using their product this way. Hopefully there is a "fix" that I am overlooking, but Customer Support at PreSonus hasn't come up with a solution. (I'm not sure I have been able to communicate the problem in a way that they understand.)

So with my "standing noise" in the studio down at -53 to -56, I don't need to lose sleep dreaming up new noise fixes for the room.