Crazy metallic sound in heaphones..please help!

[elwoodblues]

hey all,

been a while since I posted but haven't had problems til now. Here is the situation:

I am getting some sort of delay in the phones when recording with my NTK. The sound does not go to tape but most people can't deal with it in the phones to even attempt to sing. It is quite annoying and sounds like you're in a tin can.

I have used the mic before without this problem but I was using the headphone out on HUI which made it so that I had to monitor in the control room the exact same as the headphones (no good). Now I am using the headphone out on the digi connected to the send/return plug on a 50 foot snake that goes into the tracking room and I have this problem.

The only way I can tame the problem is to take the heaphone out on the digi into my 1604 VLZ (mackie board) and send the vox to a seperate mix and out to the phones through the snake but I have to record 2 vox tracks so that I can monitor one with phones through OUT #3 (on back of digi 001). The other vox track forces me to leave the fader down on HUI or the problem is back in singers phones (this makes punches a real pain).

I have tried different cables, mics, and headphones....same problem

Any suggestions, I haven't found anything from searching. thanks

[Bastiaan]

I think i understand your problem.

You have the output of protools coming into the mixer, and you mix the mic you are tracking a little with it....right?

So...you have the same signal apearing twice on the headphone out. You can test this by disengaging low-latency monitoring, and set the hardware-buffer as high as possible. Now you will have a delay on the cans instead of a phaser-ish effect...right?

you can do 2 things:

disable the output of the channelstrip with the mic on it by muting it in protools while tracking. You are already mixing in the signal on the mackie...

disable the adding of the tracked signal directly on the Mackie board, and only let protools handle the mix. (while tracking, the position of the fader in protools will NOT affect the signal you are recording...).

If you want a different mix on the cans, you can connect let's say output 3&4 to the cans, and setup aux-sends to make a different mix for the cans.

I hope this all makes sense...

[elwoodblues]

Bastian,

I might be just a little confused on how you use the word "mix" because I run the phones out of the digi into the board and do NOT add anything (eq, effects, etc.) I simply put it in as an insert ch 1 on the mackie and send it to mix1 and then to the phones output of the mackie and the problem goes away. I do not use the mackie to monitor with at all. (maybe this was obvious before- I am still learning how to try to describe all these connections and am not sure if I am doing a good enough job--please correct me if needed)

I get this problem even if I run a headphone extension from the digi headphone out into the other room. (ie: completely bypassing HUI and the mackie board) this is what is confusing for me [img]images/icons/confused.gif[/img]

I think I am following you though. Unfortunately, I won't be able to try your suggestion for a few days though cus I just left my studio and won't be back for a few days [img]images/icons/frown.gif[/img] but I will try to do what you said when I return.

maybe it is just a PT setting that somehow got changed. I never had this problem before that is what is frustrating.

Maybe the exact signal chain before the digi would help:

NTK is plugged into Whirlwind snake
then to the XLR input on Joe Meek
balanced 1/4" out to XLR in on Rosetta
SPDIF to Digi

I am completley stumped...


thanks for your input. it is greatly appreciated...

[Bastiaan]

Sounds like you somehow got a phasing issue. Check to see if there are 2 routes over wich the signal from the mic can reach the hedaphones.

[elwoodblues]

I thought that it was phasing at first too. I forgot to mention above that I was runing the NTK through a joe meek and then an apogee rosetta. I tried the phase switch on the meek with no luck.