first accepted, then later rejected
Hello.
I received a rejection notice on one of my recordings. Your quality assurance person said this:
“
- There is a high level of white noise/hiss impacting your sample that is adversely affecting the quality.
- Loud electrical noise/static sounds are impacting your sample and adversely affecting the quality.
“
I reviewed the *.wav file I uploaded to your site. I first listened to it on my PC. When I placed it at full volume, I could hear the “noise/static” and the “hiss” your quality group described. I then stopped the recording, still at full volume. The “hiss” and “noise/static” did not go away. Suspecting that there is an issue with my headphone amplifier, I burned the *.wav file to a CD. I then listened to the *.wav file with my CD player and the “hiss” and “noise/static” went away. That being said, I was wondering if you could check the equipment you listened to my recording. I am suspecting that you might have an issue with your headphone amplifier as well. Do you review songs with a PC setup?
Would it be possible to re-review the uploaded recording with this in mind?
The sample is number: 157974. I have not removed it from my profile.
If there’s truly a problem with my setup I need to know and fix this. This time I don’t think this is an issue on my end.
Could you contact me when you get a minute?
Thanks.
Andy Blackwood
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Hi, Andy!
Thanks for reaching out to let us know about this occurrence! It wouldn’t be normal behavior of our system/platform to degrade a sample or audio file, but it wouldn’t be impossible either. I will be doing research on the subject and let you know whether this is a bug needing to be squashed, a one time glitch or something else that may be hindering the performance of our audio processing.
Would you mind uploading the file here: it would be very helpful if you could upload the original export/render of the file, the one you’re able to download from our site (if still available) or even an audio capture from the file playing on our platform, so we can have a more detailed form of determining the potential source of the noise.
Cheers!
- Héctor Adolfo Ituarte (VoiceBunny QC Agent)
Hello.
Thanks for getting back to me. I didn't understand what you meant about "uploading the file here". Should I just e-mail it to you?
Thanks and regards.
Andy
Hi, Andy!
Please post a link to a downloadable file in your next post: you can use Google Drive, WeTransfer or Dropbox or whatever file sharing service suits you best. This is what us and the pros around these parts of the internet do as a standard procedure to share audio for evaluation.
What I mean to do is precisely that: try to discard the probable reasons for noise induction at any point in time or part of the upload/review process.
We use Apple computers and Sony MDR-7506 headphones. On a side note, these headphones are the best $100-$120 you’d ever spend when shooting for a home or professional monitoring solution: they are used industry-wide and while they can exacerbate certain frequencies, they deliver an almost flat profile for which music, video, movies, TV shows and most VO work have all been tuned to for many, many years (therefore they deliver a sound signature we’re all inadvertently used to.)
The preference for Apple is personal and professional, since the DAC units in their computers, tablets and phones are super high quality, support the highest sampling rates and rarely if ever suffer of coil whine or other types of electromagnetic contamination from the motherboard or other internal components. Some of us route our audio through interfaces such as the UA Apollo, Behringer U-Phoria UMC 404HD and various models of Presonus gear (by the way I couldn’t sing higher praise of the aforementioned Behringer so get yourself one if possible as it is super clean and super affordable.)
Now, onto our problem: please upload the WAV you bounced/exported for upload, the files that our platform allows you to download (whether WAV or MP3) and any other related test files you have laying around. We’re due for some experimentation and having enough material will certainly serve us well.
Thanks for the patience and willingness to help you and us out!
- Héctor.
Hello.
Thanks for getting back to me. Here's the link. Hopefully this will work. Please let me know if you need anything else, etc.
Thanks.
Andy
https://www.dropbox.com/s/z0ooolx5dbuoe59/audition_blackwood_voice_bunny_3.wav?dl=0
Hey there Andy! I'm a bunny vo artist and I just listened to it on my Sennheiser hd280 pro headphones. (about $100) I didn't hear any white noise/static/hiss.
Hi Andy, thanks for the upload.
I'm not picking up any hiss, which is good, but I'm picking some electrical hum, a low-frequency rumble that's affecting the quality of your audio.
There are tons of reasons for that, could be interference between electrical cables and your audio cables, the ground loop in your space, or many more. One of the easiest ways to deal with it is applying a mild high-pass filter, between 40hz and 70hz, to the point that doesn't affect the lows on your voice, but takes away the rumble, please try that and let us know how it goes.
Danny/Jonatan,
Thanks for giving this a listen. I have a question. Did you listen to the file off of your PC?
The reason I am asking is that I can hear the noise/static on my PC based headphone amp. If I create a CD with the file and play it on my CD player, the noise disappears.
Please let me know what you think.
Thanks.
Andy
Anytime Andy,
I did listen from my mac.
This could be a very rare situation, I've never seen anything like that before, but, we must have in mind that the file our clients are getting will be most likely the one that we are listening from our computers, that's why we need to address that situation from the making. The problem is not that big, I'm confident this could be easily overcome.
Hi, gents!
I'm sorry about going M.I.A. on this and other posts as I was overcoming some technical issues of my own, saving my dear old MacBook Pro from the grip of death.
So, I hear what Danny and Johnny have said before! There is no hiss, but there's a hum. This is an acoustic issue though, not an electrical/electronic one.
Could you be so kind as to share your recording gear's characteristics (preamp, interface and/or mixer) and settings used to record? This sounds like a gain issue paired with a bit of room acoustics playing against you in those frequencies mentioned by Johantan.
Cheers!
Hello.
Thanks for getting back to this. The equipment I used for the recording is the following:
Microphone: Nuemann TLM-103
USB Interface/pre-amp: Focusrite Scarlett -- this also contains my headphone amplifier.
DAW: Reaper--not sure which version
Levels: I normalized the track, and I set the output for -3dB. I think I created a mono output using 16 bit encoding--I tried to follow the directions exactly.
Other Notes: I used spectral editing to clean up some s-pops, etc., typically in the 5 to 9 kHz range. Used no EQ or compression as instructed. I did also use a subtraction filter on the track. I record the room noise and use the sample to subtract out any hard-drive buzz, etc. I also have an acoustical box around my PC for reducing this noise as well.
I have a question for everyone. When you listened to the track, did you use a headphone amplifier connected to a PC? The reason I am asking is that I hear hum, static, etc. on my PC headphone setup (Focusrite Scarlett). When I burn a CD and play it through a stand alone CD player, I hear none of that.
Please let me know what you think.
Thanks.
Andy
Most illuminating, Andy!
Neumann mics are lovely as they get, but they have high sensitivity (as should be expected of such an expensive piece of hardware.) This usually makes them susceptible to pick frequencies such as faint echoes/reverbs depending on the acoustic environment/placement. Their harmonic distortion is also famously infamous because it can help us with a robust, warm, coloration of our voice especially in the low end.
As for the static or noise you hear, it might indeed be a problem with the Scarlett. What I do and would suggest to follow suit is to connect your headphones straight to PC headphone port. Reaper has a feature I love and find very useful: if you go into settings, you can select the audio input and output to be handled by different pieces of hardware.
In my case, the MacBook I work in sometimes has issues pushing all the bits at high sample rates when trying to use my interface as the headphone/main output, so what I do is that I select the interface as the input device at the highest sample rate my system can handle/I need (96K/24b) and record at that. in that panel I also select my headphone port as the output device for monitoring tasks. Refer to the picture below for a reference.
Now, your mileage may vary with this setting, but then again, you could use it just for comparison in the attempt to shed light upon the source of this unwanted noise. This is all about trying and finding out what works and how good of a solution it turns out to be.
Onto the hum issue: please share with us a photo of the settings on your Scarlett and the mic positioning/booth so that we may dispell the mistery source of that hum. I have a strong suspicion that your sonic ambiance and a higher-than-desireable gain might be at fault.
Thanks for staying with us!
- Héctor.
Hello.
Thanks for getting back to me. I played with the Reaper settings as you suggested. They didn't help, unfortunately. I agree with your assessment that my interface may be the culprit. When I unplug the USB cord, the noise goes away. Also, I hear buzz/static just wearing the headphones, with no recording playing. This still brings me back to the quality of the file I submitted. Has anyone listened to the file independently of a computer based headphone system? I still believe my *.wav file is fine.
I evaluated my noise floor. I believe your requirement is <-60dB. What I do with my recordings is I first sample my noise floor. I take the "noise" sample and then subtract any unwanted signals from my recording. According to my spectrum analyser plugin, my effective noise floor is <72 dB. Please see the wave pattern below.
Thanks.
Andy
Hey Andy!
I'm sorry to hear that my previous advice didn't yield a positive result. Let us not be discouraged, though!
If you're able to hear any sort of noise/static/crackling while a USB device is connected, this may not necessarily be an issue with your USB device, as also the ports or motherboard in your computer could be at fault. A grounding issue at a component level (within your computer's MB) is tough to pinpoint, but not to isolate.
Start by plugging in your headphones without any other device connected to your computer and start adding devices until you start hearing whatever noise you've already identified. This may happen with the interface, with a USB drive or anything that draws power from your USB ports (they carry 5V for bus power.) With some computers, it may be a USB 3x port issue, stemming from a sort of incompatibility between a higher speed port being used with an interface that works with the slower, older USB 2.0 standard. This has happened to me before and a sort of unbelievable solution is to use a USB 3 to USB 2 hub and connect the interface there instead of directly to the computer. Finally, try different cables! Some cables may lack in isolation and pick up noise in consequence.
Now, until you can isolate the source/potential cause of the noise, that tip and any other advice we cand dispense are on a YMMV basis.
Another important setting to consider lies within the export: when rendering or bouncing files to our 44.1/16 standard, always enable dithering if you're coming from a higher sample rate (which we all should try to do theoretically.) This will help to eliminate any instance of white noise that may result from the downsampling process.
Don't hesitate to share your findings with us! Annoying issues with our setups just like this one are those that teach us the most.
- Have a great week!
Hello.
Thanks for getting back to me. I tried a couple things as you suggested. It didn't seem to help. To be honest I am not that concerned. My playback method should be independent of the files my DAW generates.
That being said, I am coming back to my original questions:
Could you contact me when you get a minute?
Thanks.
Andy