Cable Hiss (How do I kill it??!!)

[juube]

Hi Softies

I'm recording some guitar parts using a profire 610 to a macbook using a quarter inch cable. I noticed a low level hiss as i turned the gain up. So trying to figure out what was the problem, I incidentally touched the metallic part of the head which does not go into your guitar when you plug a 1/4 inch head into your guitar jack.
The thing is when i touch this part of the cable, the hiss is lessened. I tried keeping my toe on the other end of the cable head (my interface is on the floor at the moment). This helped for a little while but my toe started to ache abit ( i think too much electricity going through it)

So the questions is, is there a way to permanently remove the low level hiss without having to keep my toe on that part of the cable head?some grounding issue perhaps...

 

[blueprintstudios]

yeap sounds like a grounding issue. go to simlim square tell them your situation i'm sure them electrician gurus can help.
otherwise MY alternative in the mean time, go to your kitchen. tear up a roll of aluminium foil, make a "toe ring" with a "connection" all the way to it so you don't have to stretch your legs to keep on the cable.

in the mean time also try, if there's anything part of the computer or recording gear 2 Pinned plugged into the power socket , unplug and turn it around/alternate it and plug in again see if problem persists.

 

[juube]

Hi blueprint studios. Thanks for the tip. I've got no 2 pin plugs to reverse. So I'll head down to sim lim square soon. I'm just wondering which is the shop you'd go to for these electrical stuff. I've never done anything with grounding or stuff like that.

 

[blueprintstudios]

usually I go to suang huat heng trading 02-68 simlim square but I recall someone mentioned a shop supposedly cheaper/better than my recommendation but I couldn't find it the last time.

 

[ABSin]

Hi,
actually i know the Profire takes in balanced line input. However, does your guitar sends out a balanced output too? Most guitars are sending out unbalanced signal.
You can try to buy/ customise a balanced guitar/ line cable and test it. Maybe it will elminate the noise.
Another soultion will be to borrow/ buy a direct box ( DI) and plug your current cable to this DI and get a balanced XLR cable and plug into your Profire610 mic input.
This will be a sloution for you.

 

[blueprintstudios]

a DI box would be ideal. but I believe in this case his buzzing problem won't be solved (cos I do get that problem at times) with the DI cos the buzzing comes from the guitar itself , it's like a "strat" thing.

 

[ABSin]

a DI box would be ideal. but I believe in this case his buzzing problem won't be solved (cos I do get that problem at times) with the DI cos the buzzing comes from the guitar itself , it's like a "strat" thing.

Hi I got want u meant. As ther guitar output itself is unbalanced and grounding is the cause of this,
A ground/ lift switch on the di might help. My pc. Used to send an annoying buzz to me speakers when I touch
The housing of the cpu. Right now, I added a buzz off in btw to try. It minimise the noise level by 80%
At least. Maybe I should try out with a " better" buzz eliminator to get the noise out totally. You have several DIs now. What is the result in diff. When you plug this
Guitar to your Behringer and the 300bucks Radial.

 

[blueprintstudios]

as you can see here
as an example i'm using a radial DI but the "ground" switch thingy doesnt work cos the whole house location grounding is poor. there'll always be "sparks" and "buzz" sounds . so I looked in their kitchen for a DIY grounding solution and used aluminium foil (as a wire) to the toe ring. and it worked magic. the song recorded during this picture is My Love (Acoustic) and Lady Marmalade (Acoustic) purely on the old Zoom H4 inputs/mics , you can check it out on their myspace

like you said "might" help, it would be much harmless to try my "kitchen fix" method before you splurge above $100 on a DI box. my method "REMOVED" the buzz not reduce. noise gaters (buzz eliminator) etc, kills sustain/tone at times. so it's not ideal.

I sold off my behringer cos I'm no longer doing live recording, at least, no plans to already.
I used the Behringer DI800 for this event

each guitar/bass/ went into the DI box and output to their live PA + my multitrack recorder so I could mix them individually clearly.

and difference between radial/behringer is not "audibly" huge until you start mixing heavily. one is "effective for cost" the other one is "assurance of quality" , no one has anything bad to say about radial for sure.