Noise floor

Does this noise floor look normal? The low end on all channels seems to pulse, so it’s not constant like the top end is. Perhaps this pulse has something to do with the actual electrical socket or something?

I can’t seem to hear it though, even when I boost the shit out of it, so I guess no biggie really :man_shrugging:

Also, I should mention screenshot has the signal boosted by 18db. so it’s coming in around -90 at 0.

I never noticed much of my noise floor until I bought a nice saturation and compressor. They boost the noise up to the point that I really started to hear it. So I have to watch out for it now. What I found out is that our washing machine and dryer add A LOT of extra noise to my audio. So much, that there have been times that I just shut off my gear and walk away. Mind you, I couldn’t really hear it at all before I boosted it with the compression.

The other source of noise that plagues my setup is USB to my computer. I cannot leave a USB cable connected to my PC to any gear that has an audio output because it will introduce these high frequency PC noise sounds that are really really irritating.

I don’t tend to use much if any compression at mix stage/ on channel strips, if I want super compressed drums I’ll sample em like that… alleviates stuff like this too I guess. And yeah my pc is super noisy, but I don’t really use soft and hardware in conjunction much so doesn’t cause me much grief thankfully.

This sounds a lot like you have a groundloop issue. The USB to computer connection only makes it worse. Make sure that all your device are connected to one wall outlet. Make sure that you make one serial chain of power strips. Any parallel chain will cause trouble, whether it is using multiple outlets, or by splitting the chain into more parallel chains.

This sounds a lot like you have a groundloop issue.

Yeah I have tried a lot of different things to get around it. Thanks for the suggestions. You might be onto something with the parallel chains of power strips because I do have at least 3 if not 4 different power strips that are plugged into the wall from 2 different outlets. The outlets are on the same circuit though. I’ve just learned to live with it really. The noise is at such a low volume that it really just comes into play when I am cranking some gain up to a stupid level somewhere and that is likely just a bad practice anyways.