Topic: Unidentified Noise in Recording

[mattmiller]

I taped a show earlier this week and notice some unidentified noise in the first song.  Listen here, if you have a minute:

http://www.mattslivemusic.com/lastofme.mp3

It starts at about :09 with the introduction of the cymbals, but it seems to persist and morph into more of a static-sounding noise.  At about 1:04 it disappears for a few seconds, and then shows up again at 1:07, and is present for most of the rest of the song.  After this relatively quiet song came several much louder songs, so I can't tell if it continues into the next song.  But 30 minutes later or so I don't hear it during a couple more quiet songs.

The source of this is CMC-8 > SP-SPSB-1 > HD-P2 (24/48).  This sample was resampled/dithered with CEP 2.0 using pretty much default settings, but the sound is there in the 24 bit version as well, so it's not some artifact of the conversion.  As this was the first song of the set, when I was listening to it I was afraid I ran my levels too conservatively and picked up some noise on the normalization, but my understanding is that is REALLY hard to do at 24 bit, and then I discovered that its apparently absent in the rest of the recording.  So in the end I'm not sure what it is.

Any ideas?  Is it something that can be easily disguised (using CEP 2.0), or would you just leave it as is?

[mattmiller]

Anybody?  Please?

[acidjack]

Anybody?  Please?

That is weird. It almost sounds to me like some kind of residual sound from the cymbals, but it goes on too long to be that (I think)....I assume you didn't notice it from the PA itself, but is it possible you recorded what was actually there?

[Microbe]

Hey Matt,

Is it possible the overhead mics on the drum kit were phasing a bit?  that's what it sounds like to me.

CK

[mattmiller]

I didn't notice it during the show, but nevertheless I'm leaning towards it being something that was there to be recorded, rather than something that went wrong on my end.  At least that's what I want to believe.

[digifish_music]

Anybody?  Please?

That is weird. It almost sounds to me like some kind of residual sound from the cymbals, but it goes on too long to be that (I think)....I assume you didn't notice it from the PA itself, but is it possible you recorded what was actually there?

I assume the .wav sounds the same? The MP3 compression may be adding to the artifact. I'd check your mic preamp batteries etc.

...apart from that, there's a lot of high-frequency energy in there (you can tame this by EQing above ~6 kHz). It sounds like someone has cranked the HI-EQ knob on the mixer. Perhaps your mics were above the crowd and had a direct line of sight to the tweeters on-stage?

I'd record some cutlery clanking around in a quiet room to check your preamp and mics, just to make sure there's nothing weird there.

digifish