Hiss while recording with Apogee Duet

[LeSedna]

Hello,

I bought an Apogee Duet (first version) 2 months ago but didn't have the chance to test it for recording until today (i was abroad).

Its out work great, pristine, absolutely no problem.

When it comes to recording, I have some kind of digital noisefloor/hiss that is proportionnal to the gain, would it be in Mic or Instrument input. I've tested this with both a direct bass or via my DIbox>XLR Mic, it's there in both situations. Also, my Instr 1 does not work at all, only Instr 2 does.

I've read quite a lot of people have it as well, so I don't really know what to expect from this. At first I thought I was exagerating, but I checked my previous DI files and they are pristine, no noisefloor unless boosting like crazy the track volume, like it should be. Here it's clearly hearable, and it doesn't look like a pre problem to me since the "real material sound", I mean the vocal or guitar/bass recording part of the recorded sound would sound good if there were no hiss so it sounds like the pre work fine. It sounds like recorded with a cheap interface that would add some hiss to the sound. The kind of hiss close to the noisefloor of a low quality MP3, or to that of a cheap PC soundcard in.

Have you had this kind of problem with the interface ? It's not usable for recording any serious material in this state, and I don't know if it can be solved by just changing the breakout cable for a better one, trying another firewire cable, or anything else. The unit itself seems to work perfectly fine, and the sound I get from it by playing files is perfect.

Thanks

 

[aramism]

as far as i know i would think there's a problem somewhere either with the unit or somewhere else in your chain.

maybe a plug in? some pug ins have hum and tape hiss on sometimes in like analog mode or something. i dunno, that hap with me once drove me nuts.


try calling apogee they are very helpful folks over there. or try posting on gearslutz they are usually pretty helpful most of the times.

 

[TheWinterSnow]

I don't have one myself but this story reminded me of something I recently ran into. I was using some of Ola's DI's that he made when he had the Duet, the DI's had an insane amount of noise on them, like you described, hiss more than anything. I though I had a ground issue until I reamped my own guitars and compared them to his. There is an obvious noise floor that made his DI's basically unusable. I thought maybe it had something to do with his guitar or other part of the chain, but now that you mention this, I am thinking the duet is to blame. Possibly the quality of the breakaway cables or the device just isn't designed right and is very prone to noise.