Some people have suggested to use a PAD / attenuator to be able to use more gain on the preamp to get a better signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). THIS DOES NOT WORK and does completly the opposite. A PAD attenuates the signal from the microphone and even though the SNR of a preamp gets better at a higher gain setting, it is not enough to compensate for the massively decreased signal level. You will end up with a much worse SNR! For the best SNR do not use a PAD, neither on your mic nor the interface.
One important thing, your SNR graphs is valid and will be similar only for analog preamps with analog gain controls. If you will measure ZOOM H6, or ZOOM UAC-2, for example, the graphs will be different, because this two interfaces are designed in different way.
Good point, on the Zoom H1n for example the SNR gets significantly worse once you go below a gain of 5.5. Above that if follows the graph in the video.
For years I’ve been recording at maximum possible gain (without clipping) and then lowering gain levels in post to the appropriate level for the mix. NOBODY believed me when I said this is actually slightly more optimal in signal to noise ratio than recording at a lower level and boosting it in post. Now I have a video to show them to prove my point. Thanks!!!!!!
With maximum gain you get the lowest EIN noise. With the lowest gain you the the best dynamic range and the best possible SNR but you need to record really loud sounds. Dynamic range sets the upper limit for for SNR.
Also, some of the factors contributing to the noise some people hear will be actually the noise of the environment/room your mic is picking up and not generally the pre-amp itself. The AC, the PC fan, the traffic, the neighbor's barking dog, 60 cycle hum, vacuum cleaner etc. That's why treating and sound-proofing a recording-isolation booth, checking your wires and earthing is also important. While it's true that there's no equipment that is noise free, at least we can lessen it! Cheers for bringing this topic up!
This ridiculously widespread misconception shows well how little "engineering" is left in audio engineering nowadays. I perfectly understand why the author doesn't want to get very technical, it alienates the audience, but if someone is interested in this phenomenon it's quite simple. There is a handful of common mic preamp designs and their variations, but in any of them, the gain setting resistor is one of the sources of the noise. The resistor noise is inevitable, you could just google to find out more about it, and higher resistor values produce more noise. Turning your gain knob clockwise (i.e. increasing gain), you are lowering this resistor value(s), decreasing the noise of your preamplifier itself. It's a kind of an electrical engineering 101 case. The same applies to PADs. They are just resistor networks, that formes a voltage divider, so they add extra noise and reduce your signal level simultaneously, which is quite an effective way to ruin the SNR. especially for the mics, where the signal levels are tiny. At the line levels, tens of kiloohms are not a big deal, at the usual mic levels even an extra 100 Ohm is.
Excellent as always. I am a complete hobbyist, and I am not ashamed to admit that the most important learning point for me was the most basic---namely, if the volume of your instrument or voice is quieter, you need to be closer to the microphone. I have in recent days been bolder about cranking the gain, and I must agree that it seems much better to record "hot" and turn down the volume of my tracks in the final mix, than be nervous about the gain and later crank it up. Now I have to be on the lookout for clipping, but in my experience that is a much easier problem to contain.
Thank you for the scientific and common-sense approach to figuring out audio. Really appreciate it. Please continue debunking myths this way! Thumbs up!
"The noise floor on it's own without any reference is meaningless!" You nailed it!!! SNR is the one. Proper levelling is the first thing anyone should learn
this advice here is so spot on, and yet there are so many people that do not understand or apply this, and it's super important for a professional quality recording/mix for the end product. Great video Julian! And thanks for the thorough and very well informed and clear explanation
I've actually heard about people saying that you shouldn't max out your gain. But at the same time the first thing I learned was to dial in as much gain as I could get away with. For whatever reason I never really though about that much since the noise never bothered me much at all. I would almost immediately just get used to it haha
I suppose I should have trusted my intuition. That is how I thought it would work until I was told otherwise. I wondered why they would make preamps that got more noise at higher levels, didn't really make sense. I mean, this is how you'd assume it'd work.
Maybe you needed two concepts here. SNR and Dynamic Range (DNR). SNR is the ratio of an arbitrary signal level to noise when DNR is the ratio of maximum possible output level to noise. You will not hear hiss in presence of a strong music signal in a poor DNR amp but you will hear it during quiet passages or in silent moments. Most likely to notice with classical material than with EDM for instance. The higher the headphones or speakers sensitivity the more you will hear it.
wow Julian, great video! I always avoided using too much gain because I could hear hissing. I had a lot of trouble getting the DBX286s processor to work correctly until I followed your video on it and calibrated the gain on the dbx and inteface so that the output reached -18db. Following your method, the gain was much higher than I would normally be comfortable with but amazingly the recording sounded fantastic, and there was no perceptible noise at all - thanks again!
Your points arr based on objective measures and not on ethereal thoughts. As an audio engineer I find very valuable the information on your channel. If you can include information about how you make your measurements it would be completely amazing. Thanks for your contribution!!!
Just a masterpiece! Excellent explanation. passed my college degree just by memorizing all these terms. Now for the need for high-quality content making, I am currently focusing on audio, and your videos give me so much practical knowledge! Thank you. I just bought a zoom h1n and Deity d3 pro mic but shall get it next month. I am curious to know, how can I use both of their gain knobs to get the max SNR possible for overhead talking head videos. Which one shall be primary pre amps and more details. Can you share your thoughts and experiences, please?
I was lucky to not know anything about recording when I started making audio recordings because this video’s contents were intuitively obvious. Then I started participating in recording forums and doubts crept in d/t so many participants spreading these kinds of myths like they were common sense. For about a year I doubted my own ears and logic. Thank you for putting this so clearly and ‘correcting my course’. I really thought I was deaf and crazy.
What I noticed with any preamp I had is that the more you raise volume, then more characteristics change. I have SSL Alpha Channel that I use for every vocal recording, and Focusrite Saffire Pro 40, both will change the attributes of the sound at higher gains. On SSL when you crank it all the way up, you have very sharp sound output from the mic, that actually hurts your ears, almost like high shelving the signal in EQ. Lower levels of gain produce very gentle response in comparison. Driving the gain changes attributes of the signal on many pre-amps, not just the noise floor.
For anyone who is not sure how to gain stage a signal with ample headroom see if this helps: turn your gain trim all the way down, then set you fader to OdB, now turn up your gain trim to where you incoming signal is peaking between -18 and -12dB (or higher - but no higher than -1dB if you are absolutely sure your signal will never ever increase beyond this input level) and voila you have achieved nominal input gain staging for your preamp!
I grew up on tape, so those "notions" were a bit different. Later, digital presented a S/N unheard of, but behaved worse when using "tape logic" concepts. The backlash was "don't try to saturate a DAW like you do tubes or tape" (we have those as plug-ins). SO, yes, do NOT ignore maxing out your input, but be careful, and 'get close' to it, but back off from red. As always, the earlier you can optimize ALL steps in recording (room noise, mic distances, etc) will result in better results at every further step of the process. It all adds up.
Ich danke dir für deine Ratschläge. Diese kommen mir echt zugute. Ich werde dich auf jeden Fall weiterempfehlen. Tadelloses Englisch samt Fachbegriffe verdienen auch einen Daumen nach Oben.
Julian, as a professional sound guy I agree with most things you said but there's one circumstance I disagree in. If your recorder or interface doesn't have very clean preamps, you shouldn't take it very loud without something like a Fethead or Cloudlifter. A Zoom H4N or even an H5 can see improvements from such devices and it's only in those circumstances, or if your preamps don't supply much gain, do I suggest not taking your preamps above 90%. To your point (and as you know) EIN is measured with the preamps at max gain and provided you have a nice and low EIN, no problem but if not... keep the preamp gain lower and let a Cloudlifter or Fethead do the heavy lifting.
Hey Allen, I think we have to differentiate gain and the inherent noise of a preamp. I agree, if you have a noisy preamp then a FetHead or Cloudlifter can improve the situation. But lets say you only have the H4n preamp to work with and you want to record a very low signal. And lets you had to max out the gain to get the signal to a proper recording level. In this szenario it would be foolish to back off the gain to 90% because you end up with a recording with a worse SNR than just maxing out the gain.
Great Video! I hope you can make a video about how to measure and calculate the EIN of a preamp, like the one that you explain measuring the EIN of dynamic mics. Also, I am confused about the relation between EIN and DR. It would be greatly appreciated if you can explain that in the video too. Thank you so much! :D
You are right, of course: the cascaded noise figure of attenuated amp stages is truly horrible compared to max gain - use a lot of gain for best bit resolution but I leave a bit of headroom to avoid transient clipping and for additional processing. Also, the best cascaded noise figures will be strong signals at the front end of the signal chain... that might not always be the most complimentary TONE, but it will absolutely have better SNR, otherwise as you pointed out, you are amplifying front end noise. .
10:26 I'd change the wording to say that the first step is to maximize the _acoustic_ signal _going to_ the microphone, and to them maximize the the amplification at the preamp.
Exactly. Increasing the gain of the preamp only amplifies the already existing noise. The signal will be amplified faster. It does not add more noise!!
Good thinking, Julian! My take away message for this topic is to use microphones with low ratings for both impedance / self-noise AND sensitivity. The lower the impedance or specified self-noise the better the signal to noise ratio at the microphone. The lower the sensitivity of the mic the higher you can crank up your gain to the reach maximum signal to noise ratio at the preamp. In practice though you always have consider the amount of gain your preamp can provide, which sets limits for the minimum sensitivity, of course. So its always a balancing act, taking all technical parameters into perspective. Regards Ellef
I agree that the mic should have low self-noise. But not necessarily a low sensitivity. The first step to getting good SNR is to get a strong signal from your mic. If the mic has a very low sensitivity, the signal from the mic will be very low. But regardless of the sensitivity of the mic, if you place the mic properly AND set your gain properly you will end up with a low noise recording.
@@JulianKrause The perspective I wanted to draw is that a lower sensitivity mic allows to push more gain at the interface, hence can increase the preamp SNR. A very "hot" mic could require less gain, hence decrease the preamp SNR.
@@ellef9331 Err, no. If you tried this in practice, you would find that the hotter mic actually produces the better SNR! Let's say the mic is 5 dB hotter (but remaining a dynamic mic of same impedance). If you turn down the preamp by 5 dB to compensate, your EIN might worsen by 1 dB - but your noise floor still is 4 dB lower than before! The absolute worst-case scenario is that the noise floor stays the same. It can't get any worse than that. The absolutely highest SNR that a dynamic mic can produce with a given sound level and on an ideal noiseless preamp is determined by its sensitivity and the thermal noise of its voice coil resistance. So the following are basically equivalent: -59 dBV/Pa at 150 ohms -56 dBV/Pa at 300 ohms -53 dBV/Pa at 600 ohms Practical results on real-life preamps are likely to be more or less skewed - my lowly Behringer mixer (EIN approx -126 dBu shorted ~= -124.8 dBu @ 150 ohm) would deliver best results with the 600 ohm one, being voltage noise limited.
Thanks Julian! For next DEMYSTIFY i would wish an USB vs. "Studio" Micros+Interface!!!!! I have an AUNA-usb-mic (dont know the exactly name), but cost just 80 € or so. I had also a focusrite 3gen 22 and a Rode NT1. I have also testest my Shure SM8 kondensor.... The noise/signal proportion of Rode, Sm8 via scarlett is REALLY much, much, much worser than the lowprice Usb-Auna! Maybe my focusrite or NT1, SM8, my cables.... they all are monday-products.... thats really, realy improbablen but it´s not impossible, but it would be a really unbelivabel random/chance! On the other hand i´m quiet happy with my cheap USB-Auna, most noisefloor can my rx6 delete, "without " artefacing the use-signal! But yeah, this this process is herable, but i need my phones really LOUAD and solo this "track" to indicate some "artefacts" of the use-signal!!!! What i want to say: I´m quite happy with my 80 bucks USB- AUNA, but QUITE is not absolut! I would be very intersting, if anyone really good data-specs-tester, like you, would do a fair, §data" test... espacilly the noiseflor vs. use-signal would be very interseting! As much "linear" is not my point, i have equalizer and other tools.... to fix this! But unwanted nose is an ar,teffct that no EQ, etc. will solve! not Could you please, please REALLY test some usb-mics vs. xlr mics+interface? Maybe ALL of my "profi"stuff are really ALL monday-products... or my "feeling" is wrong... but what a chance would that be? From my personal experience i prefer to BELIEVE that USB Mics are better than 3times expansive "studio-stuff!! But i would buy 3,4 times higher equipment, IF the result is REALLY, not snake-oil or even a "better-worse.maker", in german we have the nice word "Verschlimmbessrung"! BTW: most usefull tip : if you are a "bedroom" producer, and dont have have a Singer-Cabine... use the room wich is most from street- noises", cpu-heater-noise, all other kinds of non-interface/Equipment noise .. sometimes is maybe in 99% the closet will really "echo" ... but it is much more easier to fix the WC_hall, than unexpected street-noise.... And btw: 3,4 carpets, an open window, your last washing on to drier., and a near micro-spot (in 40gegress) to reduc S, P, T... ... and your closett will not sound like a typically echo clossett! And even if ... with RX6 it is more easy to reduce ROOM (hall/echo) than "random" noise" (cars, crying people, however and the Computer-noise....) from the street! Of cousre this all is not optimal, but if you want optimal, you have to pay at least 20K, or at lest 12-15k without SNAKEOIL Religion! belieferness! BTW and tis is relly "Subjective" ... my AUNA sounds best if sign 30degre ago and ca. half of middle/top! But thats just my voice.... but i would stringly revommend, that you §learn" your micro! And of course Melodyne and RX are your best friends! I have only M4 and RX6.... but the bucks for his tools are a better investigation except loolkng for the BEST micro/interface.... With Melodne you can contreoll each T; P, S.... Breath..... and volume... And if course if dont hit a tone, or have too much /too little "vibrato" .... o timing-correct... you can fis this there, witjout arttefactin the rest! bhousend time better than all other pligs.... with RX you can controll noise and other "dont want it and other unexpectet EVENTS like cars, other street "noise", room nodes, etc.... ! But however there is the fist-rule: As better a MIC, as most NOT artiefacting, are your A/D produces is, as much better will the result (in terms of clear) be! Laterc "trash, nosie, anaolog Warm.eq-coloring, compressor-GLUE.... ...) to ADD is easy! But an as most as possible CLEAN signal to get, this is the really complicated stuff! In my case it seems that the 80§ Aubna.Usb mic deliefer better output, than my Fokusrite/NT 1 /SM 8.... Is this possible or did i have only bad-luck by buying some "mondays-products" ))))))
This idea of a lower gain must be a new concept. 20 yrs ago, I always heard turn the gain as high as possible without distorting. -6db pre-post for head room, -3db final product, precisely to decrease the preamp and mic noise. Only in recent years have I heard -12 to -18
OK, I am a little confused. I often record into a Yamaha mixer, and then run a cable from the mixer into a Zoom H1 to record. I have found that if I raise the gain on the mixer and lower the gain on the Zoom, I get lousy audio and more noise. But if I lower the gain on the mixer and raise the gain on my Zoom recorder I get far better sound and less noise. My conclusion is that the mixer has poorer preamps in it than the Zoom does, and that a high gain level on the mixer leads to trouble. By keeping the gain on the mixer on the low side and the gain on the Zoom on the higher side (at least 70 or more) my sound is great. Am I missing something?
That's interesting, typically you want to apply the mayority of gain in the first preamp and only use little to no gain in the later stages. This will give you the best SNR. The Zoom H1 has a weird quirk though: When you set the input level lower than 38 the SNR will get significantly worse. So, try to set the gain on the H1 to 38 and then use the gain on your mixer. This should give you optimal results.
@@JulianKrause Have been using a TLM 103/Senn 416 to John Hardy line level into Apollo Twin Duo and I noticed that when I would crank the gain on the John Hardy to a 90% my output/volume would be less and the noise floor as well. I guess the transformers were really working. Someone also shared with me that it would be 50/50 as far as distributing the signal so it would not bottle up. 50% percent on the external preamp and then 50% on the Interface (obviously not the Apollo's Preamps since they are overridden) but the line level signal. So about 54 db on JH and 20 db. on Apollo having a noise floor of about -65. Will try the method you suggested Julian. Thank you very much for your video ....Cheers and Happy New Year 2021.
@@ShroomJesus Again George, the "Apollo's Preamps" are not being used they are bypassed but the Apollo' Line Level Signal using a 1/4 inch TRS into Apollo not an XLR into the Apollo as you say (not using the preamps of the Apollo Twin, only the AD Converters) thus distributing the External Preamp and the Line Level at the interface.
@@ShroomJesus My noise floor is at about -65 and using 68db of gain for voice over it' peaks at -6 or -5. Please share George what do you mean by using a "transformer" you mean like a beachtek audio?
So, We should turn down the gain and Talk really LOUD into the Mic to get the Cleanest sound? low gain to prevent clipping and loud talking to boost signal ratio?
Its bold to even try to explain that subject, and you've done it great. Low level garbage in = high garbage out. Got it :) Lately wrestled noise issues thru interface/moog/electric guitar paths. And came to the conclusion to max to max possible rec level. I will not even touch gain knobs dedicated to their source anymore. Only preamp on my nylon string Cordoba produce outrageous noise (or ground noise?). I replaced the pre-amp with factory parts, but no lack. I don't want to record guitar thru mic, because its whole another chapter rocket science. Will need bunch of JK masterclasses :)
You should probably spend some time in your reviews talking about the interfaces (most of them on the market) where the gain adjustment is extremely top-heavy. With a dynamic mic, adjusting the gain between 1 and about 8.5 makes almost no difference. Then, from 8.5 to 10, even the slightest adjustment can blow you up into the clip range. All the theory in the world doesn't help, if the finished product doesn't sound good to the human ear. And the noise floor of an interface doesn't matter much if I have to spend all of my time trying to make micro-adjustments with a plastic dial in a range of millimeters. I just tested one of the PreSonus products where the LED meter shows almost nothing until the dial is above 9. Literally all of the USABLE adjustment is between 9 and 10. That makes it a horrible interface in practical terms, even though it fared well on your tests. Also, putting a mic right up in front of your face may well give you the ability to optimize signal to noise, but it will not give you the ability to optimize the quality of the video you are trying to produce. The real key, and I know it's difficult, is to evaluate these products in the kind of environment in which they will most often be used. For TH-cam creators, it doesn't matter if there is a way to get a better signal to noise ratio, if you cannot use it in your production.
hello Julian. I'm not recording. Just get interested in it. I will in the near future. For me, everything you said in this movie is obvious. I can't imagine people thinking any other way. Maybe because I'm a physicist by profesional training. It happen when non technical people start using equipment. Musicians are not engineers, they dont think logically, they express their feelings and that is ok. Sometimes musicians records by them selves beeing ignorants. They can hear perfectly but dont know how the sound works and how recording works.
I haven't tracked anything in a while but I usually record at -6db and @ 24 or 32-bits, Ishould have enough resolution to do whatever I want with the sound and very little noise. Also, remember that some hardware like Neve preamps have specific clipping stages and I doubt Neve didn't understand signal-to-noise ratios when they decided where they put those, i.e. there's a sweet spot on the knob.
The Model 4 and Model 5 preamps from Gordon Instruments (which are no longer in production thanks to the global shortages) are unique in that they don't use attenuation or feedback to control the output level. The gain indicated on the knob is the _true gain_ of the preamp. Whatever your gain is set to is the maximum gain. I'd be curious to see you test it (if you can get your hands on one).
This may have been true in the past, and the rumor just keeps getting passed around. I know I fell into this idea, and avoided the last 10% of gain for this reason. Glad to hear modern pre-amps don't have this problem.
great value video! do you know if press the "pad" button (on intarface) and increase the gain to compensate this signal reduction will increase SNR as well? for example, SNR will be higher with gain on 4 and pad pressed or gain in 2 with pad released? thanks!
leaving my tactical reply here. thats interesting, you could always use max-gain with the best SNR and not clip. :D probably depends on what the pad actually does.
Hey, interesting thought. But using a PAD actually decreases the signal-to-noise ratio because the noise of your recording system stays roughly the same while the signal is reduced. Yes, SNR gets better at a higher gain settings but it is not enough to compensate for the massively decreased signal. That's why you will end up with a much worse SNR. For the best SNR do not use a PAD. Neither on your mic nor the interface. Cheers!
Great video, thanks for doing this, clearly you have a good idea of where people get misconceptions from and know your stuff very throroughly! By any chance would you have any feedback for my setup? I use a DBX 286 and MOTU M2 for livestreaming. The way I set my gain is to have the DBX 286s preamp gain to the highest level I can get it without clipping. I also use a low amount of compression (just enough to reduce peaks to a sane level, around 2). From there, it still appears my viewers and myself would like a hotter signal for clarity of voice. There is headroom, so would it be preferable to increase the output gain on the DBX 286 to the highest it can without clipping or to increase the gain of the MOTU M2's input to a pre clip level?
I would say this highly depends on the interface you're using as well though. A lot of cheaper interfaces are simply not built to be used at their maximum setting.
Excellent video, and very insightful. I used to get passive mic feedback whine and worse perceived floors when not raising the physical gain dial on my mic, but I could not vocalize why this was until now. Will be sharing this with anyone who deals with this issue going forward. Thank you.
No, as noted in the video, the signal strenght of the mic also affects the SNR. But when you use a mic with a low output you should not be affraid to use the available gain to set a proper recording level.
In such a setting, your mic pre-amp/audio interface would receive: A) louder Sound signal which captured by the sound capsule of your mic B) louder Noise which generated by your mic itself C) the Noise which generated by your fethead itself at the same time.
This depends on the noise of your preamp. The FetHead amplifies the signal from the mic but also has some amount of self-noise. If your preamps have roughly the same amount of self-noise of the FetHead, it won't make a difference. Only if your preamp is very noisy a FetHead will make a significant improvement in the noise floor.
Bravo! This is as fine a tutorial as I've seen in years. I've been converting my vinyl music collection to digital and only recently began to realize that I achieve less noise with a higher gain setting on my preamp. Then I found this tutorial which confirmed what I had discovered. This detailed information greatly expanded my understanding of how best to balance signal to noise ratio. I also learned that a target recording level of -18 to -12dB is at good range to shoot for when adjusting gain and recording levels. Thank you Julian! Take it from an experienced training instructor (not in the field of audio), your tutorial is the BEST!
Actually this myth is repeated again and again to underline that you should stay close to the mic to reduce the noise. If you record farther from the mic and shortcut by increasing the gain, then you get higher noise and same recording volume. So yes, using the gain knob is the last resort (if you are already close to the mic). If your distance to the mic is constant, then you are right, gain knob does not have much effect on gain/noise ratio.
You want to use the highest gain as early as possible in the signal chain. In this case only the signal source and the first amplifier noise is important; since all later amplifiers are at lower gain, their noise is amplified far less.
If you derive the formula for equivalent input noise density of a chain of gain stages, it (unsurprisingly) turns out to be a relative of Friis' Formula as used in RF. en,eq² = en,1² + en,2² / G1² + en,3² / (G1 × G2)² + … + en,N² / (G1 × G2 × … × GN-1)² If first-stage gain G1 is big, the contribution of all the other stages is negligible. Unless, of course, there is a super mean one with lots of attenuation somewhere - if your signal becomes super low anywhere, the next stage is obviously critical.
Hi Julian I have a question, I want to make an ASMR unboxing video on my channel. My current setup is Yamaha AG06 Mixer recorded to Sony A6400 using Samson C02 Pencil Condenser Microphone. As my Mic has high self-noise, I considering buy a better mic for my setup. I see a lot of ASMR channels using rode NT5 or NT1-a for their setup. Both are condenser mic. My question is, why not just using a dynamic mic? from my perspective dynamic mic has a better self-noise performance? I need your opinion. Thanks
Hey, I have a video that answers your question: th-cam.com/video/_P8AJxVepUE/w-d-xo.html In short, dynamic microphone mostly have a higher self-noise than condenser microphones.
Question: If the signal-to-noise ratio increases at higher gains, in the first demonstration, why didn't the first recording (recorded at lower gain) have the same amount of noise as the second recording when you equalized the volume? It should've had more noise.
I see, so that’s maybe also the point why 32-bit float is considered to be less noisy. I wonder if it’s possible to combine an amplifier with 32-bit float and an interface with 24-bit to achive a clean sound (SNR being extremely high). For this I would either use the NT1 Signature (mechanical SPL of 142 dB) or some dynamic microphone (which are mostly not very sensitive in general). All the processing (EQ, compressor etc.) should then also happen before entering the dynamic range of 144 dB from the interface (24-bit). Any ideas?
Thank you Julian. I ve noticed that the better position of the preamp of Motu M2 with mics like Neumann TLM 102, KM 184, Sure KSM 141 and CAD E100S is in between 5 and 6 approx. (70 - 100 cm distance, scale 1 - 10), when I try to capture an acoustic instrument like a violin for instance. Otherwise, the mike as just you told is more noisy apart, captures more exterior ambient noise. Would be excellent if you make a video about experience with acoustic instruments. Thank you for the very useful tutorials! Regards from Mexico
Thank you, Julian, for making this video. I have tried to explain this to boneheaded producers who rely on internet "experts" rather than sound engineering principles. This is only one example of a recording fallacy that has become widely accepted as truth. This is the first of your videos that I've seen. I will definitely check out others.
very well explained. My Shure SM58 mic is connected to Cloudlifter which in turn is going into dbx286s n then going into Zoom H4nPro into my Cubase. My question is should I keep the gain of ZoomH4NPro to 0.9 and control the gain from Input gain of Dbx? And what should I do with the output gain knob on DBX?
I bought the m track solo, the Scarlett solo, and the m audio air and they all required almost all gain in order to hear me around -12 with the AT2020. Guess this video makes a little more sense now. This kinda reminds me of the native instruments volume knob where only half of the volume knob actually effects the sound the other half just takes up space. Seems odd imo
I just realized that by following your waveform, one can get an idea of what happens between jump-cuts. That's very interesting. Am I right to guess that you may be clapping to mark where you need to edit out mistakes or mark your sections? I am also appreciating how you probably don't need to use a compressor much as you even represent us yelling at the same level. :) Anyway, on that subject, do you have any tips for those of us who may need to record yelling? Is the best way to basically lower the gain but yell close to the mic and then later normalize it? (not finding many interfaces with limiters and even then I'm not sure if they would work well for recording these types of samples) Thanks!
Does anyone know why i turn up my gain knob on the interface and it slightly changes de input signal until like 80% when suddenly DOUBLES the input signal? Should i record after that level or before it reaches it? How should i work with that issue? (it seems it happens often but it's different for each interface)
Some people have suggested to use a PAD / attenuator to be able to use more gain on the preamp to get a better signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). THIS DOES NOT WORK and does completly the opposite. A PAD attenuates the signal from the microphone and even though the SNR of a preamp gets better at a higher gain setting, it is not enough to compensate for the massively decreased signal level. You will end up with a much worse SNR! For the best SNR do not use a PAD, neither on your mic nor the interface.
One important thing, your SNR graphs is valid and will be similar only for analog preamps with analog gain controls. If you will measure ZOOM H6, or ZOOM UAC-2, for example, the graphs will be different, because this two interfaces are designed in different way.
Good point, on the Zoom H1n for example the SNR gets significantly worse once you go below a gain of 5.5. Above that if follows the graph in the video.
Yes, on some interfaces they combine digitally controlled resistor networks in the input of an preamp with digital gain control after A/D conversion.
@Julian Krause I couldn't follow anymore from 8:25 when i realized, that there's no cable attached to the SM57 :D
@@tobytoxd Hehe, truly wireless audio :)
For years I’ve been recording at maximum possible gain (without clipping) and then lowering gain levels in post to the appropriate level for the mix. NOBODY believed me when I said this is actually slightly more optimal in signal to noise ratio than recording at a lower level and boosting it in post. Now I have a video to show them to prove my point. Thanks!!!!!!
So when you self have proofen it it is less true, than when someone else makes a video about it?
storkstork sadly that’s how friends work. They don’t believe you till someone famous or well know/reputable makes a video on it
Tube pres saturate, not fets.
Is this also valid for speech recordings?
Do you then apply some form of noise cancellation in post?
Use that gain, people! Thanks for this Julian.
omg your here...Julian has achieved god level of AUDIO information.
@@peachesasmr9366 lol
May the gain be with you!
oh lord the worlds are crossing over
Why are you here. Scalping video ideas?
With maximum gain you get the lowest EIN noise. With the lowest gain you the the best dynamic range and the best possible SNR but you need to record really loud sounds. Dynamic range sets the upper limit for for SNR.
Also, some of the factors contributing to the noise some people hear will be actually the noise of the environment/room your mic is picking up and not generally the pre-amp itself. The AC, the PC fan, the traffic, the neighbor's barking dog, 60 cycle hum, vacuum cleaner etc. That's why treating and sound-proofing a recording-isolation booth, checking your wires and earthing is also important. While it's true that there's no equipment that is noise free, at least we can lessen it!
Cheers for bringing this topic up!
Your videos dig a lot deeper into the science of audio, than other videos I've seen. Great work! Keep it up dude!
This ridiculously widespread misconception shows well how little "engineering" is left in audio engineering nowadays. I perfectly understand why the author doesn't want to get very technical, it alienates the audience, but if someone is interested in this phenomenon it's quite simple. There is a handful of common mic preamp designs and their variations, but in any of them, the gain setting resistor is one of the sources of the noise. The resistor noise is inevitable, you could just google to find out more about it, and higher resistor values produce more noise. Turning your gain knob clockwise (i.e. increasing gain), you are lowering this resistor value(s), decreasing the noise of your preamplifier itself. It's a kind of an electrical engineering 101 case. The same applies to PADs. They are just resistor networks, that formes a voltage divider, so they add extra noise and reduce your signal level simultaneously, which is quite an effective way to ruin the SNR. especially for the mics, where the signal levels are tiny. At the line levels, tens of kiloohms are not a big deal, at the usual mic levels even an extra 100 Ohm is.
i think i understand....
lol
fascinating stuff....
(controlling the temperature of the resistor helps too)
Excellent as always. I am a complete hobbyist, and I am not ashamed to admit that the most important learning point for me was the most basic---namely, if the volume of your instrument or voice is quieter, you need to be closer to the microphone. I have in recent days been bolder about cranking the gain, and I must agree that it seems much better to record "hot" and turn down the volume of my tracks in the final mix, than be nervous about the gain and later crank it up. Now I have to be on the lookout for clipping, but in my experience that is a much easier problem to contain.
Clear, logical, concise. Good job, here.
You are a master at explaining complex topics in an easy to understand way!
Thank you for the scientific and common-sense approach to figuring out audio. Really appreciate it. Please continue debunking myths this way! Thumbs up!
"The noise floor on it's own without any reference is meaningless!" You nailed it!!! SNR is the one. Proper levelling is the first thing anyone should learn
I always suspected this to be true anecdotally. Thank you for doing the analysis confirming my thoughts!
this advice here is so spot on, and yet there are so many people that do not understand or apply this, and it's super important for a professional quality recording/mix for the end product. Great video Julian! And thanks for the thorough and very well informed and clear explanation
What are you laughing at:
Me: nothing
My brain: *julian krause saying *no**
time stamp please?
6:31
Julian, your channel is pure gold, cheers From Mexico and thank you for amazing content.
I've actually heard about people saying that you shouldn't max out your gain. But at the same time the first thing I learned was to dial in as much gain as I could get away with. For whatever reason I never really though about that much since the noise never bothered me much at all. I would almost immediately just get used to it haha
I suppose I should have trusted my intuition. That is how I thought it would work until I was told otherwise. I wondered why they would make preamps that got more noise at higher levels, didn't really make sense.
I mean, this is how you'd assume it'd work.
I think a manufacturer would stop the dial from even going that high if it was a bad thing.
@@arthurvandergracht7101these two comments should have non profit marketing for the music community
Maybe you needed two concepts here. SNR and Dynamic Range (DNR). SNR is the ratio of an arbitrary signal level to noise when DNR is the ratio of maximum possible output level to noise. You will not hear hiss in presence of a strong music signal in a poor DNR amp but you will hear it during quiet passages or in silent moments. Most likely to notice with classical material than with EDM for instance. The higher the headphones or speakers sensitivity the more you will hear it.
Thanks Julian. I was taught that 30 years ago. Why did everyone forgot that? 🤔👍
As a musician i've always recorded that way. Good explanation and thanks for debunking that non sense, cheers.
wow Julian, great video! I always avoided using too much gain because I could hear hissing. I had a lot of trouble getting the DBX286s processor to work correctly until I followed your video on it and calibrated the gain on the dbx and inteface so that the output reached -18db. Following your method, the gain was much higher than I would normally be comfortable with but amazingly the recording sounded fantastic, and there was no perceptible noise at all - thanks again!
Your points arr based on objective measures and not on ethereal thoughts. As an audio engineer I find very valuable the information on your channel. If you can include information about how you make your measurements it would be completely amazing. Thanks for your contribution!!!
Just a masterpiece! Excellent explanation. passed my college degree just by memorizing all these terms. Now for the need for high-quality content making, I am currently focusing on audio, and your videos give me so much practical knowledge! Thank you.
I just bought a zoom h1n and Deity d3 pro mic but shall get it next month. I am curious to know, how can I use both of their gain knobs to get the max SNR possible for overhead talking head videos. Which one shall be primary pre amps and more details. Can you share your thoughts and experiences, please?
Thanks Julian. Your videos are always fun, informative and great to watch.
I was lucky to not know anything about recording when I started making audio recordings because this video’s contents were intuitively obvious. Then I started participating in recording forums and doubts crept in d/t so many participants spreading these kinds of myths like they were common sense. For about a year I doubted my own ears and logic. Thank you for putting this so clearly and ‘correcting my course’. I really thought I was deaf and crazy.
The most helpful video ever on the subject of signal-to-noise ratio. Fabulous!
I paid for it and I'm gonna use it. Thanks Julian.
What I noticed with any preamp I had is that the more you raise volume, then more characteristics change.
I have SSL Alpha Channel that I use for every vocal recording, and Focusrite Saffire Pro 40, both will change the attributes of the sound at higher gains. On SSL when you crank it all the way up, you have very sharp sound output from the mic, that actually hurts your ears, almost like high shelving the signal in EQ.
Lower levels of gain produce very gentle response in comparison.
Driving the gain changes attributes of the signal on many pre-amps, not just the noise floor.
For anyone who is not sure how to gain stage a signal with ample headroom see if this helps: turn your gain trim all the way down, then set you fader to OdB, now turn up your gain trim to where you incoming signal is peaking between -18 and -12dB (or higher - but no higher than -1dB if you are absolutely sure your signal will never ever increase beyond this input level) and voila you have achieved nominal input gain staging for your preamp!
As always, thank you for the excellent, clear explanation along with the data and examples to reinforce it!
I grew up on tape, so those "notions" were a bit different. Later, digital presented a S/N unheard of, but behaved worse when using "tape logic" concepts. The backlash was "don't try to saturate a DAW like you do tubes or tape" (we have those as plug-ins). SO, yes, do NOT ignore maxing out your input, but be careful, and 'get close' to it, but back off from red. As always, the earlier you can optimize ALL steps in recording (room noise, mic distances, etc) will result in better results at every further step of the process. It all adds up.
Ich danke dir für deine Ratschläge. Diese kommen mir echt zugute. Ich werde dich auf jeden Fall weiterempfehlen. Tadelloses Englisch samt Fachbegriffe verdienen auch einen Daumen nach Oben.
Julian, as a professional sound guy I agree with most things you said but there's one circumstance I disagree in. If your recorder or interface doesn't have very clean preamps, you shouldn't take it very loud without something like a Fethead or Cloudlifter. A Zoom H4N or even an H5 can see improvements from such devices and it's only in those circumstances, or if your preamps don't supply much gain, do I suggest not taking your preamps above 90%.
To your point (and as you know) EIN is measured with the preamps at max gain and provided you have a nice and low EIN, no problem but if not... keep the preamp gain lower and let a Cloudlifter or Fethead do the heavy lifting.
Hey Allen, I think we have to differentiate gain and the inherent noise of a preamp. I agree, if you have a noisy preamp then a FetHead or Cloudlifter can improve the situation. But lets say you only have the H4n preamp to work with and you want to record a very low signal. And lets you had to max out the gain to get the signal to a proper recording level. In this szenario it would be foolish to back off the gain to 90% because you end up with a recording with a worse SNR than just maxing out the gain.
@@JulianKrause Totally.
Great Video! I hope you can make a video about how to measure and calculate the EIN of a preamp, like the one that you explain measuring the EIN of dynamic mics. Also, I am confused about the relation between EIN and DR. It would be greatly appreciated if you can explain that in the video too. Thank you so much! :D
You are right, of course: the cascaded noise figure of attenuated amp stages is truly horrible compared to max gain - use a lot of gain for best bit resolution but I leave a bit of headroom to avoid transient clipping and for additional processing. Also, the best cascaded noise figures will be strong signals at the front end of the signal chain... that might not always be the most complimentary TONE, but it will absolutely have better SNR, otherwise as you pointed out, you are amplifying front end noise.
.
Thanks for this bit of "myth busting" - great as usual.
Julian...
You da man! Your explanations are always educational and backed by the science while explained in clear language. Once again, nice job.
Thanks Julian . I always say to my self the same thing .why not get it right from the beginning why a boost in post !
10:26 I'd change the wording to say that the first step is to maximize the _acoustic_ signal _going to_ the microphone, and to them maximize the the amplification at the preamp.
Exactly. Increasing the gain of the preamp only amplifies the already existing noise. The signal will be amplified faster. It does not add more noise!!
Hi Julian, your channel is outstanding. Thanks for all your research and knowledge!
Thanks! I like your teaching style!
I have the AEA preamp 2. Is it better to raise the Mic Gain option versus raising the output option ? Which one should be used more ? ❤️
Excellent, I learned so much from this. Outstanding tutorial. Thanks.
Good thinking, Julian!
My take away message for this topic is to use microphones with low ratings for both impedance / self-noise AND sensitivity. The lower the impedance or specified self-noise the better the signal to noise ratio at the microphone. The lower the sensitivity of the mic the higher you can crank up your gain to the reach maximum signal to noise ratio at the preamp. In practice though you always have consider the amount of gain your preamp can provide, which sets limits for the minimum sensitivity, of course. So its always a balancing act, taking all technical parameters into perspective.
Regards
Ellef
I agree that the mic should have low self-noise. But not necessarily a low sensitivity. The first step to getting good SNR is to get a strong signal from your mic. If the mic has a very low sensitivity, the signal from the mic will be very low. But regardless of the sensitivity of the mic, if you place the mic properly AND set your gain properly you will end up with a low noise recording.
@@JulianKrause The perspective I wanted to draw is that a lower sensitivity mic allows to push more gain at the interface, hence can increase the preamp SNR. A very "hot" mic could require less gain, hence decrease the preamp SNR.
@@ellef9331 Err, no. If you tried this in practice, you would find that the hotter mic actually produces the better SNR!
Let's say the mic is 5 dB hotter (but remaining a dynamic mic of same impedance). If you turn down the preamp by 5 dB to compensate, your EIN might worsen by 1 dB - but your noise floor still is 4 dB lower than before! The absolute worst-case scenario is that the noise floor stays the same. It can't get any worse than that.
The absolutely highest SNR that a dynamic mic can produce with a given sound level and on an ideal noiseless preamp is determined by its sensitivity and the thermal noise of its voice coil resistance. So the following are basically equivalent:
-59 dBV/Pa at 150 ohms
-56 dBV/Pa at 300 ohms
-53 dBV/Pa at 600 ohms
Practical results on real-life preamps are likely to be more or less skewed - my lowly Behringer mixer (EIN approx -126 dBu shorted ~= -124.8 dBu @ 150 ohm) would deliver best results with the 600 ohm one, being voltage noise limited.
Wow. I’ve never heard this explained so well
This makes so much sense. Thanks a lot Julian!
Linked saved and ready to send to the next person to tell me not to raise my gain. Thank you.
The best vídeos. Thanks for being so precise and specific!
Thanks Julian! For next DEMYSTIFY i would wish an USB vs. "Studio" Micros+Interface!!!!! I have an AUNA-usb-mic (dont know the exactly name), but cost just 80 € or so. I had also a focusrite 3gen 22 and a Rode NT1. I have also testest my Shure SM8 kondensor.... The noise/signal proportion of Rode, Sm8 via scarlett is REALLY much, much, much worser than the lowprice Usb-Auna! Maybe my focusrite or NT1, SM8, my cables.... they all are monday-products.... thats really, realy improbablen but it´s not impossible, but it would be a really unbelivabel random/chance! On the other hand i´m quiet happy with my cheap USB-Auna, most noisefloor can my rx6 delete, "without " artefacing the use-signal! But yeah, this this process is herable, but i need my phones really LOUAD and solo this "track" to indicate some "artefacts" of the use-signal!!!! What i want to say: I´m quite happy with my 80 bucks USB- AUNA, but QUITE is not absolut! I would be very intersting, if anyone really good data-specs-tester, like you, would do a fair, §data" test... espacilly the noiseflor vs. use-signal would be very interseting! As much "linear" is not my point, i have equalizer and other tools.... to fix this! But unwanted nose is an ar,teffct that no EQ, etc. will solve! not Could you please, please REALLY test some usb-mics vs. xlr mics+interface? Maybe ALL of my "profi"stuff are really ALL monday-products... or my "feeling" is wrong... but what a chance would that be? From my personal experience i prefer to BELIEVE that USB Mics are better than 3times expansive "studio-stuff!! But i would buy 3,4 times higher equipment, IF the result is REALLY, not snake-oil or even a "better-worse.maker", in german we have the nice word "Verschlimmbessrung"! BTW: most usefull tip : if you are a "bedroom" producer, and dont have have a Singer-Cabine... use the room wich is most from street- noises", cpu-heater-noise, all other kinds of non-interface/Equipment noise .. sometimes is maybe in 99% the closet will really "echo" ... but it is much more easier to fix the WC_hall, than unexpected street-noise.... And btw: 3,4 carpets, an open window, your last washing on to drier., and a near micro-spot (in 40gegress) to reduc S, P, T... ... and your closett will not sound like a typically echo clossett! And even if ... with RX6 it is more easy to reduce ROOM (hall/echo) than "random" noise" (cars, crying people, however and the Computer-noise....) from the street! Of cousre this all is not optimal, but if you want optimal, you have to pay at least 20K, or at lest 12-15k without SNAKEOIL Religion! belieferness! BTW and tis is relly "Subjective" ... my AUNA sounds best if sign 30degre ago and ca. half of middle/top! But thats just my voice.... but i would stringly revommend, that you §learn" your micro! And of course Melodyne and RX are your best friends! I have only M4 and RX6.... but the bucks for his tools are a better investigation except loolkng for the BEST micro/interface.... With Melodne you can contreoll each T; P, S.... Breath..... and volume... And if course if dont hit a tone, or have too much /too little "vibrato" .... o timing-correct... you can fis this there, witjout arttefactin the rest! bhousend time better than all other pligs.... with RX you can controll noise and other "dont want it and other unexpectet EVENTS like cars, other street "noise", room nodes, etc.... ! But however there is the fist-rule: As better a MIC, as most NOT artiefacting, are your A/D produces is, as much better will the result (in terms of clear) be! Laterc "trash, nosie, anaolog Warm.eq-coloring, compressor-GLUE.... ...) to ADD is easy! But an as most as possible CLEAN signal to get, this is the really complicated stuff! In my case it seems that the 80§ Aubna.Usb mic deliefer better output, than my Fokusrite/NT 1 /SM 8.... Is this possible or did i have only bad-luck by buying some "mondays-products" ))))))
Great explanation, Julian. Kudos!
Thank you, I have a zoom livetrack L-8 and lewitt lct 240 pro condenser mic and I deal with a lot of problems with noisy recordings.
This idea of a lower gain must be a new concept. 20 yrs ago, I always heard turn the gain as high as possible without distorting. -6db pre-post for head room, -3db final product, precisely to decrease the preamp and mic noise. Only in recent years have I heard -12 to -18
Digital conversion doesn't tolerate ANY overload.
OK, I am a little confused. I often record into a Yamaha mixer, and then run a cable from the mixer into a Zoom H1 to record. I have found that if I raise the gain on the mixer and lower the gain on the Zoom, I get lousy audio and more noise. But if I lower the gain on the mixer and raise the gain on my Zoom recorder I get far better sound and less noise. My conclusion is that the mixer has poorer preamps in it than the Zoom does, and that a high gain level on the mixer leads to trouble. By keeping the gain on the mixer on the low side and the gain on the Zoom on the higher side (at least 70 or more) my sound is great. Am I missing something?
That's interesting, typically you want to apply the mayority of gain in the first preamp and only use little to no gain in the later stages. This will give you the best SNR.
The Zoom H1 has a weird quirk though: When you set the input level lower than 38 the SNR will get significantly worse. So, try to set the gain on the H1 to 38 and then use the gain on your mixer. This should give you optimal results.
@@JulianKrause Thanks, perhaps that was the problem - the zoom was set lower than 38.
@@JulianKrause Have been using a TLM 103/Senn 416 to John Hardy line level into Apollo Twin Duo and I noticed that when I would crank the gain on the John Hardy to a 90% my output/volume would be less and the noise floor as well. I guess the transformers were really working. Someone also shared with me that it would be 50/50 as far as distributing the signal so it would not bottle up. 50% percent on the external preamp and then 50% on the Interface (obviously not the Apollo's Preamps since they are overridden) but the line level signal. So about 54 db on JH and 20 db. on Apollo having a noise floor of about -65. Will try the method you suggested Julian. Thank you very much for your video ....Cheers and Happy New Year 2021.
@@ShroomJesus Again George, the "Apollo's Preamps" are not being used they are bypassed but the Apollo' Line Level Signal using a 1/4 inch TRS into Apollo not an XLR into the Apollo as you say (not using the preamps of the Apollo Twin, only the AD Converters) thus distributing the External Preamp and the Line Level at the interface.
@@ShroomJesus My noise floor is at about -65 and using 68db of gain for voice over it' peaks at -6 or -5. Please share George what do you mean by using a "transformer" you mean like a beachtek audio?
Really clear and informative. Thanks a lot for this.
So, We should turn down the gain and Talk really LOUD into the Mic to get the Cleanest sound? low gain to prevent clipping and loud talking to boost signal ratio?
I found the exact info i was looking for, thank you very much. you are doing an amazing job.
Its bold to even try to explain that subject, and you've done it great. Low level garbage in = high garbage out. Got it :)
Lately wrestled noise issues thru interface/moog/electric guitar paths. And came to the conclusion to max to max possible rec level. I will not even touch gain knobs dedicated to their source anymore. Only preamp on my nylon string Cordoba produce outrageous noise (or ground noise?). I replaced the pre-amp with factory parts, but no lack. I don't want to record guitar thru mic, because its whole another chapter rocket science. Will need bunch of JK masterclasses :)
Genius..thanks for your work Julian
Have you been taking acting lessons? You are far more animated than usual. Excellent analytical info as always. Well done. Thanks.
Haha no, but this topic is very important to me an I wanted to convey it with more energy :)
You should probably spend some time in your reviews talking about the interfaces (most of them on the market) where the gain adjustment is extremely top-heavy. With a dynamic mic, adjusting the gain between 1 and about 8.5 makes almost no difference. Then, from 8.5 to 10, even the slightest adjustment can blow you up into the clip range.
All the theory in the world doesn't help, if the finished product doesn't sound good to the human ear. And the noise floor of an interface doesn't matter much if I have to spend all of my time trying to make micro-adjustments with a plastic dial in a range of millimeters.
I just tested one of the PreSonus products where the LED meter shows almost nothing until the dial is above 9. Literally all of the USABLE adjustment is between 9 and 10. That makes it a horrible interface in practical terms, even though it fared well on your tests. Also, putting a mic right up in front of your face may well give you the ability to optimize signal to noise, but it will not give you the ability to optimize the quality of the video you are trying to produce.
The real key, and I know it's difficult, is to evaluate these products in the kind of environment in which they will most often be used. For TH-cam creators, it doesn't matter if there is a way to get a better signal to noise ratio, if you cannot use it in your production.
Thought this was commen sense...
(Original comment from months ago, somehow got removed)
I will need to test this on my harbinger mixer and ART usb preamp.
hello Julian. I'm not recording. Just get interested in it. I will in the near future. For me, everything you said in this movie is obvious. I can't imagine people thinking any other way. Maybe because I'm a physicist by profesional training. It happen when non technical people start using equipment. Musicians are not engineers, they dont think logically, they express their feelings and that is ok. Sometimes musicians records by them selves beeing ignorants. They can hear perfectly but dont know how the sound works and how recording works.
I haven't tracked anything in a while but I usually record at -6db and @ 24 or 32-bits, Ishould have enough resolution to do whatever I want with the sound and very little noise. Also, remember that some hardware like Neve preamps have specific clipping stages and I doubt Neve didn't understand signal-to-noise ratios when they decided where they put those, i.e. there's a sweet spot on the knob.
The Model 4 and Model 5 preamps from Gordon Instruments (which are no longer in production thanks to the global shortages) are unique in that they don't use attenuation or feedback to control the output level. The gain indicated on the knob is the _true gain_ of the preamp. Whatever your gain is set to is the maximum gain. I'd be curious to see you test it (if you can get your hands on one).
I just so happened to check the Gordon website and lo! They have just released the Model 6. I am beside myself.
This may have been true in the past, and the rumor just keeps getting passed around. I know I fell into this idea, and avoided the last 10% of gain for this reason. Glad to hear modern pre-amps don't have this problem.
Very well explained. Great analysis.
I dig German humour. Blink and you can miss it. Cool.
this dude needs an award! I thought the same, but this makes so much sense!
Time to readjust my gain again XD
Thank you.
great value video!
do you know if press the "pad" button (on intarface) and increase the gain to compensate this signal reduction will increase SNR as well?
for example, SNR will be higher with gain on 4 and pad pressed or gain in 2 with pad released?
thanks!
leaving my tactical reply here. thats interesting, you could always use max-gain with the best SNR and not clip. :D probably depends on what the pad actually does.
Hey, interesting thought. But using a PAD actually decreases the signal-to-noise ratio because the noise of your recording system stays roughly the same while the signal is reduced. Yes, SNR gets better at a higher gain settings but it is not enough to compensate for the massively decreased signal. That's why you will end up with a much worse SNR. For the best SNR do not use a PAD. Neither on your mic nor the interface. Cheers!
Great video, thanks for doing this, clearly you have a good idea of where people get misconceptions from and know your stuff very throroughly!
By any chance would you have any feedback for my setup? I use a DBX 286 and MOTU M2 for livestreaming. The way I set my gain is to have the DBX 286s preamp gain to the highest level I can get it without clipping. I also use a low amount of compression (just enough to reduce peaks to a sane level, around 2). From there, it still appears my viewers and myself would like a hotter signal for clarity of voice. There is headroom, so would it be preferable to increase the output gain on the DBX 286 to the highest it can without clipping or to increase the gain of the MOTU M2's input to a pre clip level?
I would say this highly depends on the interface you're using as well though. A lot of cheaper interfaces are simply not built to be used at their maximum setting.
Excellent video, and very insightful. I used to get passive mic feedback whine and worse perceived floors when not raising the physical gain dial on my mic, but I could not vocalize why this was until now. Will be sharing this with anyone who deals with this issue going forward. Thank you.
Does this mean that gain hungry mics like sm7b or RE20 will have higher SNR or lower noise floor to the not gain hungry mics?
No, as noted in the video, the signal strenght of the mic also affects the SNR. But when you use a mic with a low output you should not be affraid to use the available gain to set a proper recording level.
I bardzo ładnie to wytłumaczyłeś. Thx
Dumb question: Would I get a "higher signal" with something like a fethead? Is this the same?
In such a setting, your mic pre-amp/audio interface would receive:
A) louder Sound signal which captured by the sound capsule of your mic
B) louder Noise which generated by your mic itself
C) the Noise which generated by your fethead itself
at the same time.
This depends on the noise of your preamp. The FetHead amplifies the signal from the mic but also has some amount of self-noise. If your preamps have roughly the same amount of self-noise of the FetHead, it won't make a difference. Only if your preamp is very noisy a FetHead will make a significant improvement in the noise floor.
Bravo! This is as fine a tutorial as I've seen in years. I've been converting my vinyl music collection to digital and only recently began to realize that I achieve less noise with a higher gain setting on my preamp. Then I found this tutorial which confirmed what I had discovered. This detailed information greatly expanded my understanding of how best to balance signal to noise ratio. I also learned that a target recording level of -18 to -12dB is at good range to shoot for when adjusting gain and recording levels. Thank you Julian! Take it from an experienced training instructor (not in the field of audio), your tutorial is the BEST!
Actually this myth is repeated again and again to underline that you should stay close to the mic to reduce the noise.
If you record farther from the mic and shortcut by increasing the gain, then you get higher noise and same recording volume. So yes, using the gain knob is the last resort (if you are already close to the mic).
If your distance to the mic is constant, then you are right, gain knob does not have much effect on gain/noise ratio.
You want to use the highest gain as early as possible in the signal chain. In this case only the signal source and the first amplifier noise is important; since all later amplifiers are at lower gain, their noise is amplified far less.
If you derive the formula for equivalent input noise density of a chain of gain stages, it (unsurprisingly) turns out to be a relative of Friis' Formula as used in RF.
en,eq² = en,1² + en,2² / G1² + en,3² / (G1 × G2)² + …
+ en,N² / (G1 × G2 × … × GN-1)²
If first-stage gain G1 is big, the contribution of all the other stages is negligible. Unless, of course, there is a super mean one with lots of attenuation somewhere - if your signal becomes super low anywhere, the next stage is obviously critical.
Hi Julian I have a question,
I want to make an ASMR unboxing video on my channel.
My current setup is Yamaha AG06 Mixer recorded to Sony A6400 using Samson C02 Pencil Condenser Microphone.
As my Mic has high self-noise, I considering buy a better mic for my setup. I see a lot of ASMR channels using rode NT5 or NT1-a for their setup.
Both are condenser mic. My question is, why not just using a dynamic mic? from my perspective dynamic mic has a better self-noise performance? I need your opinion.
Thanks
Hey, I have a video that answers your question: th-cam.com/video/_P8AJxVepUE/w-d-xo.html
In short, dynamic microphone mostly have a higher self-noise than condenser microphones.
Great information. Subscribed
Question: If the signal-to-noise ratio increases at higher gains, in the first demonstration, why didn't the first recording (recorded at lower gain) have the same amount of noise as the second recording when you equalized the volume? It should've had more noise.
I think because the level is not different enough. He has another clip that demonstrate the snr getting worse when record at lowest gain.
I see, so that’s maybe also the point why 32-bit float is considered to be less noisy.
I wonder if it’s possible to combine an amplifier with 32-bit float and an interface with 24-bit to achive a clean sound (SNR being extremely high). For this I would either use the NT1 Signature (mechanical SPL of 142 dB) or some dynamic microphone (which are mostly not very sensitive in general). All the processing (EQ, compressor etc.) should then also happen before entering the dynamic range of 144 dB from the interface (24-bit).
Any ideas?
Brilliant! Very clear and concise explanation 👍🏼
Thank you Julian. I ve noticed that the better position of the preamp of Motu M2 with mics like Neumann TLM 102, KM 184, Sure KSM 141 and CAD E100S is in between 5 and 6 approx. (70 - 100 cm distance, scale 1 - 10), when I try to capture an acoustic instrument like a violin for instance. Otherwise, the mike as just you told is more noisy apart, captures more exterior ambient noise. Would be excellent if you make a video about experience with acoustic instruments. Thank you for the very useful tutorials! Regards from Mexico
What mic are you using for these video's? It sounds very clear. And your room doesn't look like a recording booth.
So useful!
Thank you, Julian, for making this video. I have tried to explain this to boneheaded producers who rely on internet "experts" rather than sound engineering principles. This is only one example of a recording fallacy that has become widely accepted as truth. This is the first of your videos that I've seen. I will definitely check out others.
As someone who is trying to learn more about audio, I thank you so much for this video: very clear and concise! 👍🏻
very well explained. My Shure SM58 mic is connected to Cloudlifter which in turn is going into dbx286s n then going into Zoom H4nPro into my Cubase. My question is should I keep the gain of ZoomH4NPro to 0.9 and control the gain from Input gain of Dbx? And what should I do with the output gain knob on DBX?
In other words, have a strong solid input signal.
I bought the m track solo, the Scarlett solo, and the m audio air and they all required almost all gain in order to hear me around -12 with the AT2020. Guess this video makes a little more sense now. This kinda reminds me of the native instruments volume knob where only half of the volume knob actually effects the sound the other half just takes up space. Seems odd imo
Wow wow 🤩 finally someone did it, well explained. Thank you very much!
I just realized that by following your waveform, one can get an idea of what happens between jump-cuts. That's very interesting. Am I right to guess that you may be clapping to mark where you need to edit out mistakes or mark your sections? I am also appreciating how you probably don't need to use a compressor much as you even represent us yelling at the same level. :) Anyway, on that subject, do you have any tips for those of us who may need to record yelling? Is the best way to basically lower the gain but yell close to the mic and then later normalize it? (not finding many interfaces with limiters and even then I'm not sure if they would work well for recording these types of samples) Thanks!
Well done 🙏
That "NO!" was perfect.
Does anyone know why i turn up my gain knob on the interface and it slightly changes de input signal until like 80% when suddenly DOUBLES the input signal? Should i record after that level or before it reaches it? How should i work with that issue? (it seems it happens often but it's different for each interface)