Noisy DIs, don't know the cause

[NoSoup4you22]

Hey, I'm recording leads for my band's album, and we were planning on using Amplitube Metal for the lead tone. However, it's coming out pretty noisy, even when I'm not playing anything, and I'm not sure if it's the wiring in my house, the equipment, or just the settings I'm using.

Signal chain:

Kramer with a DiMarzio X2N - EWI LDB101 active DI box (ground lift engaged) - Firestudio 26/26.

I've got a practice amp hooked up for realtime monitoring, but taking that out didn't change anything. Everything other than that is plugged into the same outlet. I tried turning off all the lights, the monitor, etc, same deal. My other guitar is even noisier, but that one has EMGs so I dunno. I have noticed that you can faintly hear the backing track and metronome in the noise, even though it shouldn't have been recorded...

Here's part of the DI, can anyone let me know if this is how it should sound?

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6097696/Painful Lessons, Lead 2, Rec (1391).wav

 

[caneris]

sounds fine to me. i ran it through Lecto and an impulse and here is the result. i think it sounds pretty good, no excess noise.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/31489933/Painfull Lessons - Lecto.wav

 

[NoSoup4you22]

Really? I mean, that's good if the DIs are usable, I'm super paranoid about it lol. But here's what happens with my Amplitube settings:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6097696/derp.mp3

Just messing around a minute ago. Listen to that shit on the end! Should I just run the DIs through a noise gate before they hit the ampsim, or would it be possible to get basically the same sound using less gain or something? I still don't know why the other tracks come through in the background, there's no mics involved or anything.

 

[caneris]

did you check out my clip? there is no noise there that you couldn't just edit out, or as you said use a gate. but its definitely usable

you may be using to much gain, your last clip is very noisy. try running a noise gate before amplitube and maybe another between that and the impulse. have you got the full DI i can run through?

 

[JakeAC5253]

I have used Amplitube Metal before, and one of my major complaints with it (aside from general sound quality heh) is the excessive noise it creates from an otherwise silent track. I've used free amp sims that made half the noise and sounded better to me. YMMV.

 

[DanLights]

the background noise of the metronome and backing track I assume will be your EMGs slightly picking that up, did you record with headphones or through your monitors? Guitar pickups are essentially microphones as well, and EMGs are usually pretty hot so I think it´s possible. I´ve had backing track bleed into DI bass tracks, the only thing I can think of is Pickups uhm... picking it up hahaha

 

[bryan_kilco]

the background noise of the metronome and backing track I assume will be your EMGs slightly picking that up, did you record with headphones or through your monitors? Guitar pickups are essentially microphones as well, and EMGs are usually pretty hot so I think it´s possible. I´ve had backing track bleed into DI bass tracks, the only thing I can think of is Pickups uhm... picking it up hahaha

I noticed this happening yesterday with my EMG 81 picking up the metronome and I was using headphones. Pretty crazy really.

 

[NoSoup4you22]

Yeah, I was using headphones. Didn't figure the pickup would be that sensitive, lol. Here's the song so far:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6097696/01 - Painful Lessons.mp3

No bass, MIDI clean guitars, and our other guitarist's leads aren't there yet. We're supposed to go in and do real drums next week. The solo at 4:20 was a real mic'd 5150 we recorded way earlier, as opposed to amplitube's 5150 at the beginning of the song.