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Slight mic distortion ?

G

Groove1670

Guest
Help. Getting slight distortion on the following.

Radio systems console
Valley 400 processor
Station Playlist (Automation).
RE 20 Mic

The only thing I have noticed is even at O DB the peak lights flash on the console. Do I need to pad down the input? Thanks.
 
Oh.... I have to Chuckle on this one.

Not enough information.

Did you just assemble this particular combination.... ?

Have you been using this combination for a while and the distortion just begin?


This isn't inteneded to make fun of you but I am reminded of an event from my past. I am spending the day following my very prude and pious boss around. We are spending the day down in "coal country" in eastern Kentucky. He has four coal mines and a "washer" there. We stop in at a rather humble little electric shop where slender little Appalachian man rebuilds electric motors from mining equipment. My boss wants to know what caused the motor to fail. (What he is getting at is: are my people mistreating their equipment?) The little man looks at him and says: "Hoss, you just as well drag a dead horse in here and ask me to look up his ass and tell you how he died."

There was a long silence, my boss smiled and said thank you. And we continued our day-trip to Appalachia.

Without more information.... your audio chain is just a dead horse laying in the floor of our forum. ;D
 
Got your point ;D

Yes the distortion has always been there.

Audio is clean. Only occurs on peaks. The distortion is minimal. Only someone with critical listening ears would notice it.

Tried backing off preamp and output level on 400. no peaks on SP recorder.

Thanks.
 
Do you hear the distortion listening to the mike on headphones off the console?

Or after you record something into the computer?

If it's after you make a recording, back your levels down into whatever program you are using for recording. The "vu" generated by the software may be fine if you are transferring something already processed into the computer (e.g., music off a cd), but may not be accurately showing how high your voice peaks are. Hence you are overdriving the audio card--causing clipping. Digital levels are very unforgiving.

Voice peaks can often be as much as 12 db higher than what you see on a typical mechanical VU.
 
I "learned the trade" back in the days of AM radio and tube type equipment. We had to fight to keep audio up there above all the sources of noise... noise in the room, noise in the tube preamps, noise in those old stepped attenuators affectionately called POTS, and then once we got on the air, keep the audio above the static and the interference in the spectrum.

Today I do recording work in digital. Old habits are hard to break. When I set up the recoding system my people use to record lectures and sermons on a CD recorder, I just don't feel comfortable having the peaks down 6 to 10 db below FULL SCALE. In my voice over studio I don't have a comfort level recording ME at 6 to 10 db below FULL SCALE.

But finally it is soaking into my crusty old brain that maxing out the full audio chain is not some kind of moral requirement, some kind of law of the universe... well at least the digital universe.

Do what the rest of us usually end up doing. Play with one device at a time. Change the settings. Change the gain settings. Put them back where they were if nothing improves. Sooner or later by process of elimination you will identify the device that is messing up your day.
 
TomT said:
Do you hear the distortion listening to the mike on headphones off the console?

Or after you record something into the computer?

If it's after you make a recording, back your levels down into whatever program you are using for recording. The "vu" generated by the software may be fine if you are transferring something already processed into the computer (e.g., music off a cd), but may not be accurately showing how high your voice peaks are. Hence you are overdriving the audio card--causing clipping. Digital levels are very unforgiving.

Voice peaks can often be as much as 12 db higher than what you see on a typical mechanical VU.
Click to expand...

When audio is in the computer realm, it is easy to end up with too much gain in the system and overdriving
the next thing. If I hear this occuring, I look at any gain sliders in any "pre-amp" audio mixer. etc I migth be using, and
the hardware volulme settings. If there seems to be too much audio already I often set them all at 60%, at least
until some dynamic processing can tame such peaks.

If it's a live source, you might need something as simple as a better pop filter,
or something that either has greater downward gain, and or faster/better downward gain.


I really think it's brief over-ranging of the data past "all ones" and becoming grunge.

I made some audio CDs on a stand alone CD burner maybe 8 years ago of some AM radio airchecks from casettes.
They sounded fine on a CD player. Played on a computer they now both sound like bad FM flutter/hissing mixed in
with any audio. The silent parts are silent, but any audio has a grating hissy rasp added to it.

I suspect it's the same thing with a slightly different effect.
Old audio equipment sounded a certain way turned up too loud.
Digital, there's sometimes no way way to know how its going to sound or behave when readings go past "all ones".
 
This probably has nothing to do with your problem, but I just noticed that you're using an Electrovoice RE20. I use RE20 microphones for some voice over sessions and also always on bass drums. I sent an RE20 back to the factory a few years ago to have the foam replaced. When I got the microphone back, I listened to it on voice and it sounded very nice. The first time I used it on a bass drum, the microphone would distort very badly on the peaks. I no longer use this microphone on drums, but it still sounds great on voice. I too would recommend checking everything in the chain until you find the culprit. The first thing you overlook is probably the problem.

Dennis
 
Do you hear the distortion listening to the mike on headphones off the console?

Or after you record something into the computer?

If it's after you make a recording, back your levels down into whatever program you are using for recording. The "vu" generated by the software may be fine if you are transferring something already processed into the computer (e.g., music off a cd), but may not be accurately showing how high your voice peaks are. Hence you are overdriving the audio card--causing clipping. Digital levels are very unforgiving.

Voice peaks can often be as much as 12 db higher than what you see on a typical mechanical VU.
Click to expand...

Only when recording to StationPlaylist. Tom, I think you might have the solution. I'll try backing off the input levels going into SP. Thanks.
 
That sounds like you're onto something. One big advantage to digital is that it doesn't add noise if the signal level is on the low side. In analog, you'd end up with a poor signal-to-noise ratio. In the digital world, once the A/D conversion has been made, you can back off the levels to prevent clipping without noise being introduced.
 
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