Guitar "hiss" in my DAW

[Dyvan13]

Hey guys, I have this horrible problem. My guitar has a low hiss whenever I try and use any mid to high gain amp simulation. I'm going direct input on my interface and connected to my Mac via usb. I took off the cover to the wiring and everything is connected firmly, and I tightened any loose parts, but the hiss is still there

Any tips from the pros? I'm still quite new to this stuff. I just found out today what an impulse was.

 

[bryan_kilco]

This is pretty much normal with high gain amps/sims.

Manually cut it out after the parts have been tracked.

 

[Dyvan13]

Really? Are you sure!! Can another more experienced member confirm this? Oh wow, I would have never guessed.

 

[bryan_kilco]

Can you post a clip of the hiss?

And yes - I'm sure. Ever crank a real amp with high gain? There's hiss. Just edit it out of any pauses and you're golden!

 

[Dyvan13]

Okay, thanks a bunch bro!

 

[abaga129]

I've noticed that the hiss can be influenced by a lot of other things as well. Some pickups probably have less than others. The shielding on your guitar could affect it. Even the environment in which you record can affect how much noise you are getting. I used to record guitars in my drummer's basement because the noise there was significantly less than at my house. I'm no expert on noise though. Just some observations that i've had.

 

[bryan_kilco]

^^ This is true. Guitars that I tracked at my old place definitely had way more noise in them than at my new place. But it wasn't exactly hiss, it was more of a weird digital sounding noise.....hard to explain.

 

[Grå Värld]

This might be dumb but I noticed when I miked up my 6505/Mesa cab that turning the light on in the room increased the hiss/noise from the amp when the guitar was on silent.

 

[abaga129]

^^
Thats not dumb at all. I believe that turning anything on that draws a lot of electricity can cause noise in a audio signals that are on the same power line. But that gets into a bunch of technical stuff. I've also heard that Florence lights are notorious for causing noise. Right? Electricity is a mysterious beast.

 

[Revson]

If you've got lights on dimmer, keep them either fully off or fully on. Anywhere in between those two is going to cause high frequency switching which will couple into the ground wires and cause noise. If at all possible, plug all your interconnected gear into the same power strip: computer, monitor, interface, amp, etc. This will minimize the resistance between the grounds on your gear and make the parallel path for current (from the outlet, to the gear, through audio cables to other gear, back to the outlet) huge by comparison and should do a lot minimize noise.