Audio hiss?

E

ejdge

Well-known member
Yesterday when we shot with an Oktava (w/ BBG + windshield), we noticed there was a slight hiss sound in the headphones. Is this normal? If not, how do we eliminate it? The footage was shot inside a car (not on) and outside.

The mic was held on an externally coiled boom to an A1-XH.

Thanks.
 
Mic Preamp, Headphone amp? lots of places are poss. Cables and connectors are not likely with hiss, more likely is the electronics and gain staging.
 
Noiz2 said:
Mic Preamp, Headphone amp? lots of places are poss. Cables and connectors are not likely with hiss, more likely is the electronics and gain staging.
Click to expand...
I dunno about that, I've had cable go bad and start hissing when some of the shielding has been cut or stepped on too many times or, heck, slammed in a car door. I'm curious as to if this was the first time using this set up or this has been used before with no problems.
 
Not saying it's impossible but I would look elsewhere first. The other problem is of course linguistics, I have never heard what I would call hiss caused by a cable, but what he or you may call hiss I might call static or something else. If you call it hiss I'm assuming a steady state kind of sound not an intermittent kind of sound and as I said I haven't traced any of those down to cables but many a strange sound has come from an unexpected place so I wouldn't be shocked if I did find a cable causing hiss. A bad shield will pick up all kinds of stuff, usually dependent on position and proximity to some noise producing device.
 
I am with Noiz here; what is generally describe as a hissing sound comes from electronic sources. Bad cables/connectors generally give you a buzzing or crackling sound.

Of course there is a lot of variance in how people describe sounds so you can never be 100% from a description and bad shielding can lead to just about any type of noise but will usually be situationally dependant.

The Canon A1 has poor preamps, odd gain structure, and bad hp amp. So the cause is very likely somewhere in there.

As far as correcting it in post, many cheap audio programs come with some simple noise removal plugin that work on constant noise like hiss.

Cheers
 
Also, how are you listening to it? Often there is lots of noise added in the headphone out circuitry (especially on the DVX100's). I recently shot an industrial with a DVX, and when listening via the return into my SD302, I was totally freaked out because it sounded so bad. When I captured the tape, the sound was fine (the one time I didn't do double system, so naturally I was especially freaked out).

Anyway, I second Oleg's post - listen to it from your NLE and see what you have before you go to crazy trying to figure it out.

Phil
 
Noiz2 and Wabbit,

Yea your probably both right about that. I was thinking over the definition of hiss and buzz and just grouped them together. Although in retrospect I can see how there are differences.

As far as correcting it I agree that there are alot of software programs that will remove the hiss. Even audacity has hiss removal so you should be able to find a program that will do it for you for free or cheap.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top