Noise Control in Home Recording

[Arya44]

Hi,

I'm wondering how you guys are managing not to have your audible noise of the computer fan in your microphone? What about the noise generated by the circuits in the computer and monitor? Do you have to find the right distance / angle or it's only matter of type / quality of your mic, cables, etc?

Thanks,

Arya44

[MidnightFlyer]

Obviously you have to get your microphone as far away as you can from the computer. I have a desk with sliding drawer that I can close, encompassing the computer, which makes the fan noise not so noticable. I also use three extensions on my keyboard cord, so that I can bring my keyboard ten or fifteen feet from the computer. This allows me to use the keyboard like a BRC (big remote control) and I can do my recording of vocals or acoustic guitar far away from the computer, using the keyboard, so I don't pick up the noise.

[stewie]

if youve got a seperate control room and live room that shoudnt be a problem i guess. or put the computer in another room.

[benlef]

Most of the noise I get come from bad/cheap cables or cheap equipement.

Like my son hooked his small (and cheap! or should I say low end!) Yamaha drum kit...Simply unusable.

I was suspecting the cable at first but after trying it with his bass the cable prooved to be excellent. The same bass with another cable was noisy.

I also can reduce some of the noise by tweaking gain at different point ie. more/less gain on the instrument, less/more gain on the Digi, etc...

[Brent Hahn]

Play really loud.

[shameeta]

I dumped a couple of thick blankets over the CPU and it cut down a lot of the sound. But you want to check it off and on tho to make sure it dosn't get too hot.

I use a highly sensitive mic so you can imagine the crap I had to go through before I got a sound proof room.

I do speech recording so had to put the mic at the other end of the room and also asked the person to speech louder into the mic. Then, during editing, I would try and use the equalizer to bring out the voice a little more. On trial and error on my part right now coz I am still learning.

Shameeta

[dazmihn]

Closets are great for isolating sound. If your gear is in there you may want ventilation of some sort.

[Barnabas]

I made a sound proof box for my computer. You can check it out at http://www.barnabas.com/sound/quietbox/

That web page also has links to other solutions.

I've never had any problems with computer monitors, but others have. The new flat panel screens eliminate all of that noise.

Fluorescent lights can be noisy. Even if they are in another room.

Low voltage lights can be noisy, especially in guitar pickups. This includes any light that has a transformer that drops the voltage down to usually 12V. This can be a desk lamp or track lighting.

[Dutty]

I use a separate room for vocal recording, however when I was using the same room (Vocals and Tracking), I had my Mic as far from the computer as possible. I never really had a problem with computer noise, It just never seemed that big of a deal. Go figure....