 From the very beginning of this video, you are hearing two main sounds, the sound of my voice and another which you may not have been aware of until about now. It's distracting, possibly annoying and can make your recording sound really unprofessional. That sound is noise. Hi folks, I'm Mike and I hope you're well. In previous eras of recording, the medium that we used itself, tape, introduced noise into the recording along with other equipment in the studio. And the noise that was created was hopefully reasonably quiet and was described as the noise floor. And one of the main ways that we would combat the noise floor interfering with the recording would be to make sure that the source, the thing that we were recording was much, much louder. And in that way, you just wouldn't notice that low level of sound. Now in the modern era, of course, we don't record to tape, we record to computer, which doesn't actually introduce any additional noise to the recording. So you would be forgiven for thinking that you don't need to care about the noise floor anymore. But I beg to differ. Now there is one exception that I'll make to that. I'll explain that later. But first of all, I'd like to thank our sponsor, DistroKid. If you follow the link in the description down below, you'll get 7% off an already amazing price to distribute your music to the world. Now I ran a little experiment just to establish that it is indeed true that there's one group of people who don't need to care about the noise floor. So in my little experiment here, I've recorded two synth parts. The first one was recorded using this Arturia Mini Freak Hardware Synthesizer. It's plugged into a focused right scale at 2i2 audio interface using two guitar cables. This is a pretty typical setup for recording a hardware synth in a home studio. Now in my door, I've recorded another part using a virtual synthesizer. This is pigments from Arturia and it exists nowhere except in the digital domain. So there's no analog processors in its recording. If I close its interface, you can see it's recording at the bottom here in green and you can see it's MIDI notes here. Whereas we can see at the top here in blue the recording from the MIDI Freak. Okay, so let's go down to the virtual instrument in green here and quickly convert it into audio so that we can deal with it in the same way as the analog recording. Remember with this, there's still no analog processing. It's still a purely digital recording at this point. And if we play them both together, you're gonna see they're roughly at the same level. We're not actually interested in the parts that have been played here. We're interested in that big silence at the beginning of both parts. So I'm gonna go ahead and delete the actual playing part of it so that we're left with that silence. And on each of these tracks, I already have a level meter here. So I'll put it on here for the MIDI Freak. That's the real world analog recording and I'll just play that silence. And as you can see, there's just a little bit of activity on the meter there. You probably didn't hear anything because it's pretty quiet but there's just a little bit of noise there. Now if we go over and do the same thing with the pigments recording, I'll just bring up the meter for that and I'll play it again. And you can see there's no movement on the meter. That's probably because it's just too quiet but is there anything there? Well, let's find out. With each of these, what I'm gonna do is apply two mixed tools, right? I'm gonna throw the mixed tool in Studio One enables you to add gain. So in two stages, I've added 24 decibels of gain for each of these, okay? So let's go and play the first one. This is the analog recording. I'll solo it and have a listen. So we can very definitely hear that there was noise there which we could now hear more clearly because we've amplified it and we could definitely see it on the meter. Let's go to the virtual instrument and have a listen and a look here. Remember the same process was applied. It was amplified in the same way. There's no sound and there's no activity on the meter and that's because there was just nothing there at all to actually amplify. We could continue adding gain to this and we'll never see any movement on that meter. And that is why people who purely record in the digital domain probably don't need to care about the noise floor. Now there may be noise present which has been put there artificially but the digital process in itself doesn't create any noise. However, there is one process in home recording which definitely creates quite a bit of noise. Now on this occasion, I'm using a dynamic microphone for my voice. The reason for that is they're very good at rejecting noises and sounds from a reasonable distance away. And on this occasion, I want this mic to reject the sound of my amplifier. This guitar amplifier is set so it's pretty noisy. Now in order to hear it, we're gonna need to switch on this microphone down here. And now you can hear all of that kind of hiss and hum going on there. Let's play some really quiet guitar. Now if you did want a pretty quiet guitar passage in your music, your listeners may find that hiss and hum a little bit distracting and kind of unprofessional sounding. Now you can't always avoid it with electric guitar recordings. Sometimes you do need to have the main volume and some of the gain stages turned up to get the sound and the tone you want. But that's not really true in this case. I'm gonna turn down the main volume of the amplifier. You can hear that that hiss and hum has pretty much gone now and I'm gonna turn up the volume of my guitar which was set pretty quiet before. Let's have a listen now. Much, much better. So the problem before was that the source, the guitar in this case, was pretty quiet so the amplifiers happened to do a lot of work and it was introducing a lot of noise. That's also true when you're using some microphones like, well, this one. The Shure SM7B is an incredibly popular and desirable microphone at the moment amongst home studio recording enthusiasts and often people will buy it and use it with something like this, a consumer level audio interface like the Focusrite Scarlett IIi2. And when they do that, they're gonna find that in order to get a decent signal, they have to turn the gain up really, really loud. The problem with that is when preamps are pushed to their limit like this, they tend to introduce a lot more noise, particularly above eight, nine and 10. So you may be thinking to yourself, ah, but Mike, why wouldn't you just record it at a lower level and bump up the volume in your door afterwards? Now you could do that and you would avoid that extra noise from the preamps. However, that does ignore the fact that you'll want to be monitoring what you're recording at the time of recording and that brings me to the second issue with some consumer level audio interfaces and that is the headphone output. This can also be quite quiet. The combination of these two things means that in order to actually monitor what you're recording, you may feel that you have to use that higher level of gain and therefore introducing that noise. So if you're gonna buy a microphone like this or you're going to be recording really quiet things, I think it's worth considering a better quality audio interface or perhaps a separate mic preamp. The modern home recording studio still has plenty of sources of noise. Let's think outside of the signal chain for a moment and think about environmental noise. Now, often we're not that well set up to exclude external noises, things like traffic outside of our window or the baby crying in the apartment above. Let me know in the comments down below if that's you by the way, not if you're the baby, but if you hear the baby. Anyway, the next thing in this particular setup would be the microphone stand that we're using. This can be a source of noise. It can pick up rumbles from the floor. It can be kicked, et cetera. That's why we use things like this shock mount here. Then we have the microphone itself. Now I will say, even with pretty budget-friendly microphones these days, their self-noise, the noise they generate with their electronics is pretty low often. However, there are some cheaper ones, which I've tried, which do create quite a lot of noise. I would say avoid those if you possibly can. Then we move on to cabling, whether it's a mic cable or a guitar cable, et cetera. I would say you don't need to go crazy with cabling in terms of expense, but I wouldn't buy the cheapest stuff. First of all, it can break pretty easily, which can introduce sort of crackling sounds. And also it can pick up other interference. So avoid the very cheapest cables would be my lesson there. Then we plug into our audio interface. As we've already discussed, this can be a source of noise in terms of the mic preamps. They can potentially be noisy. I wouldn't want to oversell this, however. If you're using a condenser microphone, normally the signal is pretty loud and modern preamps, even on sort of cheap-ish interfaces are actually pretty good. It's only if you're going to be recording pretty quiet sources or using a microphone with a low output that I would be really concerned about that. But it is worth thinking about. Then we're into the digital domain and you may think you don't have to worry about noise after that. Well, I think there are still a couple of considerations. Now, of course, there are plugins which introduced noise on purpose. They may even be emulating an old amp or something on purpose, introducing the noise of that amp. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about plugins which may accentuate noise already in the recording. So for example, you want to be careful with EQs. Specific noises exist in specific frequency ranges often. So tape hiss or hiss of some kind, I should say, exists in those mid to high frequencies. And if you wanted to boost those frequencies in your vocal or on your guitar, you'll also be boosting the noise. That's why it's important to make sure that noise is reduced as much as possible before you get to that stage. Another type of plugin which can accentuate noise is compressors. Now with compressors, we're making the loudest part of the recording quieter. We're reducing what is called the dynamic range, the difference between the quieter and the louder parts. And often we're then raising the whole signal. And when we do that, we're also raising that noise which is at the lower end of the signal. So that's something which can be exposed when you start to use compression. And again, is a good reason to try and reduce the amount of noise you have in your signal before you get to that stage. Don't forget that when you release your music, use our sponsor DistroKid. They make it super cheap, super easy and you're gonna have your music on all of the major platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon, Google Play, et cetera. Just follow that VIP link in the description down below and you're gonna get 7% off right away. So setting gain in order to combat noise has some different considerations when you're recording digitally compared to when you recorded on tape years ago. Now back in ye old days when you used tape machines and other outboard equipment, you wanted to set that level pretty high or pretty hot as some people say to make sure you're well above the noise floor. And the great thing was if you set it a little bit too hot, the clipping that would occur would actually sound pleasant on many occasions and was in fact quite desirable. That is not the case with digital clipping. It's a really unpleasant sound that the vast majority of people don't want to hear. And even if your door is now set up these days to record some pretty hot signals, that doesn't mean that the plugins that you may be using have given the same consideration to signal levels. So it's really worth avoiding setting things too loud and being in danger of clipping. On the other hand, I don't believe in setting it too quiet and that's because there are still noise considerations even when you're recording digitally and you still run the risk of having noise in your recording when you inevitably have to make that source louder in the mix. So I go for a happy medium. Now I hate to give numbers or specific numbers but I'll give you my specific number. And usually when I'm setting up my game for recording, I'll go for a peak of around about minus 6 dB. Why? Well, it's well below zero. So I'm not in danger of clipping. Now I do find that sometimes during the performance, the actual peaks can be unpredictable. So they can be significantly louder than they were when I was actually setting up the game. And that can also be because the actual performer, often me, gets a little bit more enthusiastic as they start playing. So that's why I said at that kind of level, gives myself enough head room. I don't need to worry about it while I'm recording and it's not so low that noise is going to be an issue. I'd like to take a moment to talk about two specifications which you'll often see which relate to noise. The first is self-noise. This is the amount of noise which is generated by a piece of equipment, even when there is no sound source or signal present. So for example, in terms of a microphone, they will measure it under specific conditions and determine how much noise the electrical components of the microphone make without any sound being present. Now you'll often see this expressed as DBA. I'm gonna put a link in the description down below to a pretty easy to read article which explains why they use that measurement and the kind of conditions that may be used to make that measurement. But the main thing that you need to know is that a lower number is better. So a lower number in terms of decibels for noise is better. Now another specification that you will see is signal to noise ratio and it kind of relates to that self-noise measurement we just talked about. With this, we're talking about the difference between self-noise and the thing which is being recorded, the source or the signal. Now in this case, a greater number is better. So a bigger difference in terms of decibels between those two things is better. Again, the same article which I've spoken about a moment ago follow the link in the description down below. It also explains that term as well. If you've been considering using a low output microphone like this Shure SM7B, then you should watch this video right here where I talk about the actual preamp that I use with this microphone which gives me a really clean and loud signal.