Annoying hiss

[betzq]

"Are you using the pre-amp that came with the tbone?-it shouldn't need it with the MBR"

Yes i used it, not anymore! So much brighter without it. Thanks Mate... This forum is very usefull to me!

[theJazzer]

I got mine a week ago. I own a Rhode NT5/4 not sure of the model, it's a stereo mic, and I own two sony mics, the Sony ECM-DS70P and a Sony ECM957 which I used to think was pretty good until I got the Rhode.

I haven't bothered to use the Sony 957 with the Micro, but I have used the smaller DS70P which I found to be very quiet even with the plugin power turned on.

As for the Rhode, and I don't really think it is the Rhodes fault, I found when I turned up the Sensitivity and the levels, I encountered high amounts of hiss. Really high, I was quite shocked.

I also own the Korg PXR4 micro recording unit and I never experienced this level of hiss. My reason for an upgrade to the micro was the low sample rate and compression recording of the Korg. It's a great unit especially as it has sliders, but the memory card, max 128mb and now obsolete or up to £100+ on ebay, and the mp2 recording urged me to consider the micro.

I can probably get rid of the hiss in post production on a PC. Audition has a good noise sample erase feature, but it's not ideal.

Has any one else experienced high levels of hiss using an external mic. Is there anything I can do to reduce it?

I don't expect studio level recording, though it is marketed as a professional unit and I do know what a good mic sounds like as I have a top of the range sennheiser and a neuman large diaphragm, I just thought it might be better than this.

[guitarron]

i was trying to recreate the problem tonight with my SONY ECM-DS70P
it's only the second time i even tried them and I'll be darned if i didn't notice that slight hum-it's the preamp in the MBR-effects on or off didnt matter
What i found was i could turn the sensitivity way down and it cleaned up nicely, however, I had to place the mic about six inches away from the soundhole and the track obviously left a smaller"footprint"
It was clean though
I guess a work around would be to export that track to a wav editor and adjust the gain of the wave or normalize it-not the most practical way to work-
i think it is dynamically better to have the gain up a bit-but then you'd have to use a noise reduction like that in sound forge-again not the most practical
I still like them sonically better than the built in mic (I'm only out 10 bucks)
i guess when you figure that this a low budget piece of gear which tries to do a little of everything, something somewhere is gonna suffer-it cant be all things perfectly for 250 bucks
i'm not getting a nasty hum out of it tho -i supposed it could get lost in some mixes-but i'd prefer to not have any unnecessary mud in anything if i can avoid it

[guitarron]

i forgot to mention that i have not noticed this problem when using the line input-i have used a condenser and mic pre successfully, with out hiss

[tfm0722]

Well I changed my environment totally and still got the same hiss with the same levels and effects. 

However, I was able to reduce it by turning the sensitivity way down on the onboard mic to about -10 and the input level to 85-90 and using Ag3Bcomp surprisingly, or ForNylon.  It is still audible, but not as bad.

Anyone think frequent overload, for example when the OVER comes on, can "fry" internal parts and cause permanent damage?  Just wondering  if that would affect sound quality at all. 

Well I have the extended warranty...I wonder if I can let Boss fix it somehow!

[guitarron]

You may have to contact Roland directly-if you do please keep us posted as to what they do or don't do-
Is your extended warranty thru Guitar Center by chance?