How to isolate the cause of home recording noise | How to deal with buzzing, crackling noise

The cause of home recording noise can be narrowed down by the type of sound. If you rely on a noise reduction plug-in from the beginning, you may lose the high range and resonance of your voice, so separate the recording path one by one.

Low buzzing sound

This sound is often caused by the power supply, ground, lighting, or guitar pickup. Try putting your laptop on battery power, moving to a different power strip, turning off fluorescent lights or dimmers, or reorienting your guitar.

Constant sir sound

Possible causes include insufficient preamplifier gain, microphone sensitivity, air conditioner, or PC fan. Get close enough to the microphone and set the input to a level where you don't have to raise it too much after recording. Point the back of the microphone away from the fan.

Crackling sound

This sound is likely to be caused by the buffer size being too small, CPU load, USB connection, or clock settings. Turn up the buffer, turn off heavy plug-ins, remove the USB hub and connect it to the main unit port.

Noise or contact sound from only one side

I suspect a poor contact with the cable, terminal, or conversion adapter. Move the cables to see if it changes, then replace them one by one. Do not connect or disconnect the microphone cable while phantom power is on.

Environmental sounds

You can detect the road, the next room, the clock, and the refrigerator by listening to the silent parts with headphones. Effective methods include changing the recording time, moving the microphone closer, using directivity, and using thick cloth to reduce reflections.

Separation procedure

Remove the microphone and record only the input, change to another cable, plug it into another input, reduce the power source other than the PC, and try in a different location. Don't change more than one thing at a time, and record the stage at which the cause disappears.

Lastly use noise gates and noise reduction only when necessary. Rather than completely eliminating silence, the goal is to preserve the texture of the voice and lower it to a level where it won't be noticeable in the song.