How can I remove armed track hiss?

[KJGaruda]

I'm looking to finally be rid of a pain in my neck when it comes to tracking guitars.
First, the technical stuff. I'm using Reaper, and this is my FX Chain:



In the screenshot the gate is on but when I turn it off, the hiss you'll hear in the attached audio file only gets a little louder. It only happens when the guitars are armed, and it happens with all my guitars, no matter the pickup (bridge, neck, both). When tracking bass or vocals, I'm using a different FX chain that doesn't have the hiss. That led me to believe it might've been the amp sims I was using but they all hiss.



I've been able to record full songs and get around it but I'd like to at least know what it is and what causes it, to avoid it if possible.

 

[tedtan]

The compressor at the beginning of your chain will amplify any noise before the drive pedal and amp sim even sees the signal. Maybe try bypassing the comp and see if it helps.

What interface are you using and are you having to add any gain to the guitar signal with your interface?

 

[Kymatik]

Yea what tedtan said, just put the gate at the first place in the chain and see if that works. Also make sure the threshold of the gate is set right.

 

[BMFan30]

Gate in the beginning as mentioned with the threshold level only above the noise and not any more. You still want the guitars to sound natural and not like it's glitching out on live TV each time you strike a chord. Your gate battles with a wall of sound which is why I don't like to boost or alter the sound before the gate.

My interface is rather noisy too so I go straight in, unaltered guitar signal into interface/daw. There is almost always a tuner and gate before ever other pedal and fx insert later on in my guitar chain. I usually do corrective eq before and after the compressor/fx as well if I even feel I need it. I have my IR loader after my gate usually.

I usually do only slight scoops & not abrupt cuts that's gotten me into trouble with my mixes. This minimizes on mixer insert noise early on so I get a nice clean signal to mold any way I'd like in post. Other people do it differently too and get excellent results, it's just my way which works for me.

 

[KJGaruda]

What interface are you using and are you having to add any gain to the guitar signal with your interface?

I'm using the Focusrite 2i2 Scarlett (1st Gen) with the most up to date drivers. The gain knob is sitting between 8 and 9 o'clock. I also have a Countryman Type 85 DI Box before the Focusrite.

I've moved the gate to be first in the chain and it's definitely cut out the noise when armed. Now I'm messing with the settings for the gate itself. I prefer the natural sound and don't want heavily gated guitars. Progress for sure I think!

 

[Sylim]

what exactly is the compressor even for? if it´s for sustain, only use it on tracks that actually need more sustain, like leads maybe. otherwise ditch it. in my experience there really is no need for a compressor before the amp on hi gain tones. it only complicates things without giving you any tonal benefit.

also, that noise sounds like interference coming from your pc or lights or screen. pickups will pick stuff up when pointed at the source. try turning in a different direction or move away from your desk.

 

[TonyFlyingSquirrel]

You may want to back off of some of the gain in the amp before hitting the gate as well, you can bring some in after with some mic pre gain, but very sparingly. You want the headroom to allow the guitar to bloom a bit.

 

[bostjan]

No hard and fast rules, but:

1. Start with nothing in your signal path. Listen and decide what is needed. Don't just add a bunch of plugins you don't need!
2. If you need a noise gate, it should go immediately after whatever is causing the noise. If your EQ is causing the noise, then you shouldn't be using that EQ at all. So there is no reason to have the gate where it is in the screenshot. 9999 times out of 10000, the noise comes from somewhere before the interface, so the noise gate should go first in the chain. In fact, if you need a noise gate anywhere else in the chain, you probably need two noise gates at that point.

If you have a ton of noise, and it seems unusual or irritating, check your connections, try a different cable, try repositioning your stance whilst playing, maybe check the shielding and grounding in your guitar, etc. A noise gate is a great tool, especially for high gain tones, but, if you are like me and live in a 120 year old house in a 200 year old neighbourhood with dirty power and tons of weird stray EMF, you might find out that certain hotspots in your house make your guitar act like an antenna for noise. If you move three feet one way or the other, or angle your body differently, the noise might go away. That's why I've been shielding my pickup cavities and control cavities with copper tape, grounding everything, trying to eliminate loops, using better pickups that are less prone to high noise susceptibility, etc. Now I'm on to trying out balanced wiring for recording, which will probably not work in a live situation, but I can live with a little more noise live than I can for recording.

Anyway, best of luck. I hope you pinpoint it.

 

[nickgray]

A couple of tips:

The compressor at the start of the chain is 100% unnecessary. Compressor is useful for clean tones, maybe very lightly overdriven ones, but for higher gain stuff it's useless. Distortion compresses the crap out of signal, you're getting zero benefit from a compressor running into a high gain amp, but you can elevate the background noise with it. If you're looking to get more sustain with leads, imo, use more gain, at least personally I didn't find that tinkering with the compressor settings to make it sustain high gain leads longer made any real difference, just crank the gain a bit higher.

Since you're using Reaper, use ReaGate, put it at the very start of the chain. Threshold determines when it's kicking in (how low the signal should be when the gate activates), attack and release determine how fast it kicks in and how fast it unclamps. For rhythm you typically want faster attack and release, if you want a hard gate effect set the threshold really high and use very fast attack and release. For leads, use less aggressive settings if you want long sustain, otherwise the gate will eat up the sustain.

Finally, you're using an enormous amount of gain. The rule is, use as little as you can get away with. Your current tone has way, way too much gain and it sounds really undefined, noisy and mushy. Set the gain so that you can hear the change in distortion amount when you dig into the strings. You don't have to hit the string like they owe you money, it's just that you should hear variation of playing dynamics translated to the amount of gain. It's a matter of taste and what you're used to, of course, but you have definitely way too much gain, that's for sure.

The noise you're hearing is EMI noise coming from your computer or some other electronics, pickups act as antennas and so they pick up this crappy noise. Put your smartphone right next to the pickups while plugged into a high chain channel, listen to the noise. To improve the situation, move away the computer (or the power supply if you're using a laptop) as far as possible from the guitar, and also try plugging and unplugging other electrical appliances (including lights) to see what effect they have on the noise. The position of your guitar relative to the noise can make a huge difference, something as simple as slightly changing the angle of the guitar can reduce the noise dramatically, so make sure to experiment a lot with this.

Oh, and don't use the tuner at the end of the chain. I would highly advice to create a separate channel for the tuner, low pass it so that you're getting rid of higher harmonics (same effects as dialing down the tone knob), and use a compressor before the tuner, here the compressor can really help by making the sustain longer. Ideally, still tune with the tone knob rolled off and on the neck pickup to ensure the tuner sees the fundamental. ReaTune has a window setting, play around with it (it's basically how long the tuner "listens" to the note, higher values can be of help to lower tunings, bass guitar especially).

 

[TonyFlyingSquirrel]

Subtractive eq rather than additive is always much cleaner.

 

[KJGaruda]

This is all great feedback, thanks you guys!
I just released a demo and while I was happy with myself about how much I learned on my own and how was able to put it to use, the high wore off quickly and it's back to work mode because I know I've got so much more to learn and I wanted to start from scratch for my next effort at my next level

 

[jaxadam]

Listen to whatever @Sylim says, everything that dude records is gold.

 

[DECEMBER]

I get way more noise with amp sim plugins than mics on the amp. A noise gate is the only solution.

 

[nickgray]

I've got so much more to learn

I gave the demo a quick listen, it's pretty cool, but the mix is not so good. You have the classic issue of making the guitars too loud. The mix, and the guitars are incredibly middy and the overall tonality is super mid heavy and just doesn't sound right at all.

My advice - use reference tracks. Every now and again A/B against 2-3 tracks that you know are recorded, mixed and mastered really really well and that are somewhat similar to the music you're trying to mix. Doing it blindly and relying on "it sound good to me" is a recipe for disaster.

Here, I've tinkered for like 3 minutes and this is much closer to a more "proper" balance of bass-mid-highs, but it's a super rough fix and obviously doesn't fix the issues with the mix.

Quick fix of the master track

 

[KJGaruda]

A/B against 2-3 tracks that you know are recorded, mixed and mastered really really well

I think that's part of my issue -- Mixing, to a point, is highly subjective and so I don't know what could be qualified as mixed and mastered well. The only general idea I have is that I was shooting for a clarity in the mix that allows you to hear what each guitar is doing since I like to use counterpoint and back and forth between the guitars. I guess if I had to give a single tangible example, I'd compare with Decrepit Birth's 'Diminishing Between Worlds'.

Quick fix of the master track

This actually sounds a lot closer towards what I was going for in my mind, but I need to learn the EQ moves to remove that 'smoke' that makes it sound like you're hearing things through a cone.

 

[torchlord]

I'm looking to finally be rid of a pain in my neck when it comes to tracking guitars.
First, the technical stuff. I'm using Reaper, and this is my FX Chain:

View attachment 119847

In the screenshot the gate is on but when I turn it off, the hiss you'll hear in the attached audio file only gets a little louder. It only happens when the guitars are armed, and it happens with all my guitars, no matter the pickup (bridge, neck, both). When tracking bass or vocals, I'm using a different FX chain that doesn't have the hiss. That led me to believe it might've been the amp sims I was using but they all hiss.



I've been able to record full songs and get around it but I'd like to at least know what it is and what causes it, to avoid it if possible.

I would look to get that gate after the amp/ preamp and figure out if you can have a side chain detecting the guitars input which is how the best hardware gates work.

If you still have issues after doing the other tips try using the Reafir subtractive EQ tip seen here. This will not work at getting rid of the live noise bit will remove a recorded tracks noise issues.

 

[KJGaruda]

I get way more noise with amp sim plugins than mics on the amp. A noise gate is the only solution.

Absolutely! Mic to amp has it's own goblins to work out as far as placement of the mic but its interesting to really get some hands on comparison with sim vs mics

 

[Sylim]

Listen to whatever @Sylim says, everything that dude records is gold.

wow, didn´t know i had that kind of reputation. thanks.

This is all great feedback, thanks you guys!
I just released a demo and while I was happy with myself about how much I learned on my own and how was able to put it to use, the high wore off quickly and it's back to work mode because I know I've got so much more to learn and I wanted to start from scratch for my next effort at my next level

welcome to music production. that´s exactly how it is. after every project i´m super stocked about how it turned out. a week later i´m like "meh, it´s ok i guess". and i start from scratch for the next project. with each project you learn something new and gain more experience and when you go fresh into a new project you can apply all of that and over the years you´ll get better and better and grow more confident in your skills. but that second guessing will always stay.

 

[Drew]

I've moved the gate to be first in the chain and it's definitely cut out the noise when armed. Now I'm messing with the settings for the gate itself. I prefer the natural sound and don't want heavily gated guitars. Progress for sure I think!

My suggestion - I haven't listened to any of your clips and I have no idea what sort of sound you're after, so this may or may not be appropriate. I probably use less gain than most here, though, and write bluesy instrumental hard rock, for context.

But.... ditch the gate. Some amp hum (this is what you're hearing) is normal. When tracking, I ignore it. When I've finished tracking, one of the first things I do as part of the process of prepping my tracks for a mix is go through and trim out all the empty space before the first note of guitar, leaving an extremely short fade in (inaudible is the goal) so you don't get a pop, whhen that first note comes in. If there's a period where the guitars drop out, do the reverse, using a longer fadeout if necessary to make the drop-out of amp hum less perceptible. You have a LOT more control over it doing it after the fact than you do with an automated gate.

And, I mean.. I'm a Tom Waits fan so take this with all appropriate numbers of grains of salt... but guitars hiss. That's normal. For a while I kept chasing the best possible noiseless singlecoils for my strat to try to get that lead tone, but without hum when I wasn't playing... and I've kind of done an about face these days, and see a little bit of quiet 60 cycle hum between notes on a sparse lead as just another one of those little human artifacts that come through with a performance. Embrace it. It's rock and roll.

 

[Emperoff]

Things to try (some of them already said):

- Lower the gain on the interface. Your preamps might be very noisy and you can perfectly track with gain at 0 since you're amplifying the signal digitally (with the ampsim) afterwards.

- A VST Gate will do absolutely nothing against that noise if placed after the interface preamp and before the drive effects. A gate pedal before the interface will work. A VST gate will work after the ampsim.

- Any computer is a massive EMI source (and most people record right next to it). Voltage controllers inside wreak havoc and gaming stuff is specially offending. The closer you are it or your interface, the more interferences you will pick. Try to stay away as much as you can, and turn around to find the "less noisy" spot. You will soon realize that getting super far is also not a good idea, because getting close to the walls will also emphasize noise if wire runs through them.

Playing through my recently acquired Waza-Air headphones is somewhat uncanny as I've never played through anything so quiet.