How To Measure Your X32 Rack Pre Amps and How To Remove Noise From Your System

[Music] [Applause] [Music] hey hey hey good morning guys and gals this is dana and we're up here on the behringer x 32 rack users uh private facebook group and uh norbert uh deconfin and i hope i pronounced that properly brother asked a very good question well and actually made a statement uh hey guys and girls did you notice that the x32 output levels are very high more than the mr18 more than presonus more than every device i saw i guess this is the same for all and that's what we're going to talk about today in this video we're going to talk about how to actually check the noise level of your preamps okay this is going to be for your gain structure on the x32 rack as well as the s16 so at this point let's go ahead and jump down into reaper okay guys so here we are in reaper and uh what i have set up if you're not familiar with reaper it's simply through your uh same way as your routing i've got the 32 channels coming into reaper and then 32 channels going back out back into the x 32 rack as well as the f16 now i also run the x live card uh this is just a backup for my backup guys uh this is what we're going to use to test these preamps and i've got everything set to record and i've also got a mic over here on channel 32 okay and we're going to go over some ways after we see how to check our preamps to how you can get a lot of this noise and hiss out of your system if you're doing this properly you should have no noise whatsoever coming out of those mains or front of house okay and it's real easy to do so i'm going to go ahead and hit the record button here and there we go so it's recording all 32 channels now so let's go ahead and jump over to the uh x32 edit program and we'll go from there okay guys so here we are on the x32 edit and i've got the mic on channel 32 and the way that you test your preamps is simple okay we're going to jump back over to channel one you're simply going to take your gain control and you're going to run it all the way up now that's 60 dbs maxed out and you're going to want to do this for every single channel and i'm not going to go through here and do every single one of them that's kind of why i've got one of the hot mics over here on channel 32 okay it's a sm57 and i'm going to show you some real common mistakes that people make and if you notice right down here you'll see where it's actually coming up on the meter just a little bit okay so that right there with no microphone attached nothing else done to this signal it's coming in probably around anywhere from 62 to 65 dbs okay we're gonna go ahead and run our main up over here get it to around uh zero everything zeroed out on the board guys okay that's how you check your preamps that that's how you can tell how much signal you have coming into that preamp in other words that's how noisy it is okay so let's go ahead and go over here to channel 32. now the first thing that you want to do is if this is going to be for a vocalist then you're going to want to load a preset on there okay and i'm going to show you why let me come down here and find it don't matter what we use uh moshi vocal let's go ahead and do that one we're going to hit select all and say load now the reason that you want to do this is because mostly the eq if you may have some eq presets to where you may have a boost in there well if you have a boost in there then that's going to affect your overall signal okay so that's the first place you want to start so now the second place is over here we see everybody do it okay they come up they're about uh four or five inches away from the microphone which is what i am right now i take my thumb and my pinky i extend it fully from my lips to the microphone and that's where i am right now and they'll come up and they'll go check check check check check now as you can see by your input meter over here that's exactly where i always tell you i like to see my input gains around a negative 18 dbs okay but this is improper guys this is a dynamic microphone you should have this down because you should be right up here on this microphone and i'm going to move my other mic out of the way just for a second so i don't clip it this is the audio you'll hear in the video so now i'm where i need to be so now i come up and i go check check check check check check check check check and now i'm right there where i want to be okay so we've actually uh reduced this by 12 dbs of gain it's not needed if it's not needed don't put it in this will help reduce the the hiss the noise that you'll have coming out of your speakers okay so now that we've done our sound check now what's the next thing that happens well they're up there singing they're not going check check yet they're doing this you ain't nothing but a hound dog now i apologize for my singing guys it's 3 30 in the morning i can't get too loud but you see i've already clipped the audio okay you don't need that you need to do these sound checks like these people are going to be singing it doesn't matter if you've got a guitar in there if you're if you're going through your drums all of this should be done beforehand okay so now that we've reduced the gain let's try this again you ain't nothing but a hound dog okay now look what i've done i've almost taken well i've taken 20 uh 20 25.5 dbs out of this and that's all that hiss or when you combine all these channels together okay and now you don't get that so i'm going to go ahead and mute this microphone and i want to talk about some other things okay there are so many things that can introduce noise into your signal and this is a very very limited list there are hundreds of things okay you could have a noisy outlet you need to use a real good power conditioner for those of you old enough if you remember back when mama was in the in the kitchen uh getting ready to make some mashed potatoes you're in there watching tv she plugs in the blender flips the switch on and all you see is static running through that tv okay that that's what it is that is electrical interference okay overhead power lines fluorescent lights uh the reason for lower certain lights is because of the transformers uh cheap cables or broken pins cheap microphones good microphones now look guys you know that this sure 7b i love it i own it i use it if they have a minimum requirement i think it's either a negative 57 or a negative 60 dbs of ultra clean gain now make mo mistake about it the x32 has that gain but you never want to max everything out okay you never want to have to apply all the gain that comes with your mixer you never want to turn your speakers your powered speakers all the way out the max you need to back it out okay run it about 75 80 percent improper mic placement you know that's what we just talked about and i showed you that on the on the meters okay and you know back to the sure 7b that's why when you ever see this microphone you'll always see a cloud lifter myself i use the bed heads but you're going to see something that adds more gain so you don't have to max it out on your mixer everybody says i gotta have more volume guys if you need more volume then you've got to upgrade your powered speakers or you've got to upgrade your preamps that go into your amps that go into your speakers it's just that simple okay i'm not writing these audio laws it's the way that it's been it's the way it's always gonna be okay and that's how you keep all this unwanted noise out of your system right now let's go ahead and jump back over to reaper and we'll look at some of these signals okay guys so we can go ahead and stop the recording we're going to save all these files we don't uh we'll come down here we don't need them anymore so we're going to hit edit select all and then i'm just going to take it off the recording so as you can see right here channel 32. you see that red right there it's where it was clipped i clipped that audio here's the entire waveform and remember as we were going through this and doing our check check check check and then when i got up there and started the singing to it it clipped now visualize having three or four backup singers up there uh somebody coming in with uh maybe you got a lead guitar a lead acoustic lead electric uh it don't matter what it is you've got to take the time to go through and set all these proper input levels that is your game structure it all starts with the game all right so and i'm sorry guys i am jumping back and forth on everything here but i've got to get it to where it's going to play out now as you can see uh when i record it's on the azio file here's my x live driver i got 32 coming in i got 32 going out and i need to change this to the wave out and say okay so now when i play this okay i can come up here and put a meter on it and let's watch the meter of course right now it's at an infinity and let's just go ahead and hit play okay now remember this was an open mic so now let's go ahead and bring it up a little bit closer to where we started clipping let's just zoom that out a little bit so we can watch it again and there it goes all right so let's take it back to the very beginning we're going to do the same thing on the channel one and now let's watch this meter that had no mic attached to it you seen this let's go ahead and solo it out can you see this rms level that stands for root mean squared can you see the peak on this you see that that is no noise whatsoever coming into that file look at that okay so that's how you check it guys take the time go through set it up properly and i promise you you're going to notice a tremendous difference in the audio that comes out of your speakers as well as if you decide that you want to record this never forget this record properly and master lightly alright take care god bless and we are out of here [Music] bye

Channel: Dana Tucker

Views: 1,540

Keywords: Podcasting with Reaper, Reaper DAW, Podcasting, Free Podcasting Course, Audio Books, ACX Training, ACX, Home Studio, Home Recording, Remote Recording

Id: PMyB2BphN_g

Length: 14min 35sec (875 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 28 2020