Getting rid of a subtle humming noise

The Lounge General Discussion
#1

Hey all,
a friend recommended for me to add a DI box to my dawless home studio setup, which boils down to:
synths+mics (separate ins) --> mixer (mix group) --> preamp --> AH --> 2x Boss Chorus Ensemble --> TimeLine delay --> BigSky reverb --> mixer --> monitors.
Everthing goes in to the same socket to prevent a ground loop. Still there is a subtle, steady noise.

Some questions

  1. Would you add a DI box?
  2. If so: where would you add it?
  3. would you consider reamping/attenuating? (the Chorus might not be able to handle the synths output signal)
  4. If so: which one, and how would you incorporate it?

Thanks!

#2

Are you on grounded power (and are you sure it’s actually grounded)? What’s the level of the noise when you have everything set to unity gain?

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#3

As for the DI it is not needed at all, unless you are looking for a specific sound coloring from the DI you are looking into. Its still so subtle I would not recommend it specially since you have it running into a preamp > AH anyways.

As for the noise look into noise gate pedals.

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#4

I would isolate the cause of the hum. Perhaps look at noise levels from individual devices to verify if there is a way to make changes to the gain staging/routing to eliminate some noise. I’ve seen older power supplies create noise so maybe you have a wall wart that needs to be replaced.

2 real world example from my setup:

I had a noisy recordings coming from my MV-8000. Through trial and error I discovered it was because the input gain knobs were turned up and apparently they feed through to the outputs even when nothing is plugged into them and you’re not recording or sampling. I now turn input gain down to 0 unless I’m actively recording or sampling.

The K-2000 has something odd it does with its outputs. Over time I noticed that output pairs A, B , C and D produced different levels of self noise. It turns out that D is the most noise free, and A is the worst offender. My solution was to always route signals through D first and then work backwards to A as needed.

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