Hum/Fizz/Noise etc for High gain

Community General
#1

I am running my guitar into a a DI box with ground ON with -6db headroom on the lowest palm mutes. When the Fortin Nameless VST is applied, there is strong hum on any low frequency. However, I do not have this problem on other DI tracks I find on the internet (Toontrack) and they sound fine when I run them in Reaper with the Default preset. I have;

Changed USB ports for my interface.
Downloaded and installed latest drivers (and restarted my computer) and tried ASIO4ALL.
Used a DI Box with XLR line input with ground ON.
used a UMC404HD and Focusrite Clarett USB interface.
tried 3 guitars.
tried different cables and even tried a 1ft patch cable.
changing sample rate and block size do not change anything.

I am using the default preset. Because I am a new member I cannot upload the files unfortunately.
Thanks

#2

I have similar issue and unfortunately I haven’t gotten rid of it yet. I live in a crowded city and think that it is based on something like EMI problem, not ground loop. I contacted support team and we concluded that it is due to my signal chain.

#3

Hello, @tim.hunt. Please, check your email inbox.

#4

I have these emi noises in my apartment as well. The only way to get a good spot is in my kitchen and only if the fridge isnt running

#5

I have a somewhat similar issue but I do not know that is EMI. The symptoms I have are readily apparent if I start Plini standalone - no guitar plugged in and input gain completely off on my interface - select a high-gain preset such as Selenium Forest Big Lead, and then turn the noise gate off. Output meter shows constant 30% and there is constant static hiss through the headphones. I can hear it while I’m playing as well. I do not live in a crowded city - I’m in the suburbs and there are no particular strong EMI sources that I am aware of. I can carry my laptop all around the house and in every room the noise is identical. This problem is not unique to Plini I see the same thing if I really amp up the gain (like using stacked gain pedals into S-Gear’s Wayfarer) in other plugins.

I suspect the problem may partly be my interface and I’ve not really been able to try a different interface. I don’t think this is normal or to be expected right?

#6

I have tried every possible arrangement to fix this noise I get in my guitar DI recordings through to my audio Interface. They are very pronounced with gain and on any palm mutes, not just on the 6th, 7th, or 8th string. The levels of the gain are usually very low and have been tested for instrument level input with guitar cables and Line level input with XLR cables from a DI BOX. I leave -6db of headroom based on the lowest, bassiest palm mutes so there can never be clipping.

Here are the audio samples to here the problem;

DI TRACK (The hiss is still present just turn up volume)

NEURAL DSP FORTIN NAMELESS SUITE

I have tried both at my home in two different rooms and even tested my setup at a Music Store (ANOTHER BUILDING). I have;

  1. Tried 4 guitars
  2. Tried a UMC404HD, Focusrite Clarret USB PRE2 and the Music Stores’s own Bus powered Presonus interface
  3. 4 different audio drivers (Behringer, Focusrite, Presonus and ASIO4ALL v2)
  4. 2 computers (1 laptop, 1 pc) both on registered Windows 10 and good quality specs
  5. different guitar cables
  6. a 1ft patch cable
  7. Isolated power with no wall socket power by using a laptop on battery power and a bus powered interface, so no “dirty power”.
  8. a DI BOX with GROUND ACTIVATED. (granted the DI BOX is a no-name brand for <$20, not a Radial DI box)
  9. Changed the sample rate and the Block sizes.
  10. 2 versions of amp software by different developers (NEURAL DSP and IGNITE), furthermore they both work on DI’s that sound great I got from Toontrack so I know it isn’t the software.
  11. Standing away from the interface and monitor
  12. Facing away from the interface and monitor
  13. Turning off the lights (although not the powerboard in my house).
  14. There is no hiss out of the outputs of the interfaces for monitoring other sources of sound so it is only a problem of the inputs.

The only possible problems could be…

  1. EMI OR RFI affecting the signal which I will try to resolve (if it is the problem) with Ferrite beads I have just bought that are being delivered soon. They will wrap around the instrument cables and any other cables I use. I do not know if this is the problem because the noise isn’t audible in real amps and is still present in two different buildings.
  2. Something wrong with the Recording settings on Windows 10. I am pretty sure that the only thing I have done is set the interfaces as the default playback and recording device, that should be enough right?
  3. All 3 interfaces have inferior preamps and/or the signals are compressed and so I need an external preamp such as an sE Dynamite in line preamp which adds +28db of gain so that the interface gain can be minimized.

Please if anyone can help,
Thanks

1 Like
#7

I had watched a video on Neural DSP by Rabea Massaad that inspired me to try out their amp simulation software. Unfortunately, I was quite disappointed because, as with most digital guitar rig solutions, the high gain fizz is a “show stopper” for me. In my opinion the unusually harsh high gain fizz is caused by digital clipping which is inherent in the process of overdriving digital circuits; in both virtual and real environs. Of all the digital guitar rig modelling software solutions I have used, and there have been many, the only one that actually has the high gain digital clipping problem solved is Overloud (THU/TH3); however, I continue to support all the digital software and hardware guitar rig solutions because I believe this technology is essential for the future of guitarists in the emerging music industry paradigm. I presume that other digital solution providers will eventually develop algorithms that will compare to those of Overloud which, to my ear, offer the most pristine and analog sounding signal processing available; and by a considerable margin. In that regard I wish the developers at Neural DSP the best of luck in finding their solution to this vexing problem. Perhaps this is related to your issue, your point number 10 notwithstanding, and a free trial of THU will provide you with some answers.
On another angle, I have recently discovered that the Fractal Audio AXFXIII and the AVID Eleven Rack introduce an incidental, disruptive signal gain after the initial input circuit. I couldn’t mitigate it with the sophisticated guitar jack circuits available on both of these units but I was able to dial it back using the volume pedal block in the Eleven Rack and the Input block on the AXFXIII. This has noticeably improved the clarity of the signal chain in each for all my presets. I still need to check for this in the rest of my digital guitar rig solutions, hardware and software, but perhaps this is happening in your set up. My trial of the Neural DSP product has expired so I can’t give you any ideas on how to directly address this within the standalone or plugin but you could instantiate an instance of a Neural amp model into your DAW and precede it with a utility plugin in which you can preempt any incidental gain that might be present.
I hope this helps …

#8

I had the same problem, so i went through the pc and totally cleaned up the start menu of Bunk and then did a much more optimized bootup. That fixed the popping i was getting in the daw, which about 20 other plugin on the drums. Its was still pretty noisy, so i started looking at the gain staging, and basically got that sorted aswell.
Its turned out the levels from my interface *ID14 was pretty hot for the Nolly, so i rolled that back a bit and adjusted to the input in Nolly as well. The recorded audio acually looks quite low in volume but its plenty loud enough!
I would suggest looking at all the gain staging points, ALSO! this was odd, iff i turned on BOTH inputs in the settings of Nolly instead of just one channel that made a huge difference