Old 09-03-2015, 04:40 AM   #1
Nizhny Tagil
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Default Noisegate problem recording guitar.

Hi everyone, I finally made up my mind and signed up to the forum because of a problem that I can't seem to be able to fix in any way.
First, here's my Soundcloud page in case anybody wants to check out my very humble recordings and give me some feedback/criticism: https://soundcloud.com/nizhny-tagil.

I'm trying to set up a guitar FX chain for my next project and I'm trying to do everything with Reaper's stock and JS plugins, to keep my system as clean as possibile and also keep everything minimal and simple.
Right now my guitar FX chain is: JS Noise Gate (Simple) (threshold -65, everything else default), JS Distortion (Fuzz) (shape 135, rest default), JS Convolution Amp Model (pre-amp -6.666, rest default).
I have also multiple instances of reasamplomatic5000 playing drum samples and routed to multiple tracks.
Now, the problem is that when I play guitar along with the drums I get a "rhythmic" stuttering noise coming through even though the noisegate is active and I'm muting the strings.
It's like the drum tracks signal is summing up with the guitar's background noise and creating peaks enough to get above the noisegate's threshold and make it open. I noticed this because when I play guitar without the drums I don't have such problem.
I could just raise the threshold of the gate some more but that interferes too much with my playing.
I don't understand how the drum tracks could "bleed" noise into the guitar and get the noisegate to open.

I hope that made some sense. If anybody could give me some help that would be much appreciated. Thanks.
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Old 09-03-2015, 04:50 AM   #2
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Does that also happen when you turn down the guitar's volume knob?

Are you using headphones? -> Bleed from the headphone cable into the pickups. Try running the cable over your shoulder and your back.

Are you monitoring with speakers? -> Your pickups may be "microphonic".
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Old 09-03-2015, 05:28 AM   #3
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First of all, thanks for the reply.

I haven't actually tried to turn down the guitar's volume knob but I'm not sure that would make any difference: I need that much gain to play and if I lower it in any way the problem obviously doesn't come up (the noise isn't enough to open the gate) but then I can't play the way I want.

Yes, I was using closed-back headphones+extension cable plugged into the interface to monitor but the cable wasn't near the pickups. It seems like the "bleeding" is somewhat internal.
I even thought the guitar cable could bleed into the headphones cable so I tried to have them not entwining, but it didn't work either.
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Old 09-03-2015, 05:40 AM   #4
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Originally Posted by Nizhny Tagil View Post
I haven't actually tried to turn down the guitar's volume knob but I'm not sure that would make any difference: I need that much gain to play and if I lower it in any way the problem obviously doesn't come up (the noise isn't enough to open the gate) but then I can't play the way I want.
That was meant more for testing purposes, to determine where the bleed is coming from. Alternatively you can also simply unplug the headphones from the interface and see if the bleed disappears.

Internal (within REAPER) bleed is only possible when you have a send from your drum track to the input track. If your audio interface has some routing capabilities, that would be another source of bleed. What is your interface anyway?
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Old 09-03-2015, 05:40 AM   #5
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when i play at home, the click from my speakers bleeds into the guitar pickups, too. so does any backing track i play to.
doesn´t matter if you mute the strings or not, electromagnetics from a speaker´s voice coil will get picked up.
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Old 09-03-2015, 06:00 AM   #6
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I just tried turning down the guitar's volume knob.
Well, if the FXs on the guitar track are on and the track is triggered to record and monitoring is on, the problem persists even with all of the guitar's knobs turned completely off and the guitar resting pretty far from the computer.

I am not using speakers to monitor because the bleeding would be terrible, of course. But I'm using Sennheiser HD 280 closed-back headphones and they should provide good isolation, so I don't think that's it.

I must add I tried other plugins for distortion and noisegate and other ampsims and the issue was still there.

My interface is the old version of the M-Audio Fast Track USB. Plugged into it: headphones, guitar and cables going to my monitors which are turned off.

Thanks again for all your replies.
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Old 09-03-2015, 07:08 AM   #7
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Originally Posted by MrBongo View Post
when i play at home, the click from my speakers bleeds into the guitar pickups, too. so does any backing track i play to.
doesn´t matter if you mute the strings or not, electromagnetics from a speaker´s voice coil will get picked up.
That's why one should use magnetically shielded speakers when ever possible.

Most high grade speakers have metal case or at least completely shielded electronics to prevent this from happening.
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Old 09-03-2015, 08:25 AM   #8
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when i play at home, the click from my speakers bleeds into the guitar pickups, too. so does any backing track i play to.
doesn´t matter if you mute the strings or not, electromagnetics from a speaker´s voice coil will get picked up.
...If the speaker is REALLY close to the guitar. If you can't get a foot away from your speaker then you've got bigger problems.

It must be either crosstalk between cables or microphonics. IDK what's happening to the OP.

Edit to add -
If the above was true than I think we could reasonably expect a combo amp to feedback on itself most of the time. These fields start fairly small and drop off fast.

Magnetic shielding of speakers at this point is an artifact of the time when we had CRTs and lots of different types of magnetic storage media around. Those could be damaged by the (DC) field around the speaker magnet itself. Even then you had to get really close to have any effect.

Last edited by ashcat_lt; 09-03-2015 at 08:33 AM.
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Old 09-03-2015, 08:33 AM   #9
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the problem persists even with all of the guitar's knobs turned completely off and the guitar resting pretty far from the computer.
Good. That means it's probably not your pickups, or your guitar's wiring picking up anything.

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But I'm using Sennheiser HD 280 closed-back headphones and they should provide good isolation, so I don't think that's it.
The bleed would be rather inductive/electrical, not acoustically so the type of headphone wouldn't play a role. However...

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My interface is the old version of the M-Audio Fast Track USB. Plugged into it: headphones, guitar and cables going to my monitors which are turned off.
https://www.gearslutz.com/board/musi...track-usb.html

So it seems your Fast Track has a little crosstalk/bleed problem.

People not using high gain amp sims may never encounter a problem with that, but if you're creating massive gain ITB with a plug-in, you're also amplifying tiny amounts of crosstalk a lot, since all the gain is being created behind the interface input.
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Old 09-03-2015, 09:20 AM   #10
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Originally Posted by Ollie View Post
Good. That means it's probably not your pickups, or your guitar's wiring picking up anything.



The bleed would be rather inductive/electrical, not acoustically so the type of headphone wouldn't play a role. However...



https://www.gearslutz.com/board/musi...track-usb.html

So it seems your Fast Track has a little crosstalk/bleed problem.

People not using high gain amp sims may never encounter a problem with that, but if you're creating massive gain ITB with a plug-in, you're also amplifying tiny amounts of crosstalk a lot, since all the gain is being created behind the interface input.
Thanks a lot, Ollie. Unfortunately that seems to be exactly it.
That also explains why I never ran into this before, because I had the input level switched to "LINE".

Since we're on the subject, do you people think I could just use the "LINE" input instead to record the guitar? If I'm not mistaken, that means the recorded signal will be a lot more quiet, but it shouldn't be a big problem if one uses a 24 bit depth, right?
Anyway, I should probably upgrade to a better interface. That goddamned thing caused me a lot of trouble.

EDIT: I tried to set the input to "LINE" and the problem disappears just like it's said in that page you linked.
Otherwise the other tracks bleed into the guitar's.
It seems like this problem with my interface is well documented around the Internet.

Previously I had never noticed it because my input was always clipping when recording guitars and bass, so I always had that switch on "LINE" to have the incoming signal less hot.
Would it be a problem if I use the LINE input level, especially with bass guitar? I think it bypasses the preamp of the interface or something like that. Afterall, that's what I did so far.

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Old 09-03-2015, 10:38 AM   #11
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I record all of my guitars into line inputs. With most interfaces, the difference in gain is about 10db, and it usually doesn't make enough of a difference in S/N to be noticeable over the guitar itself. You do want to make sure the guitar is buffered before it hits that hole though or you'll lose a lot of treble - almost exactly like turning down the T knob on your guitar. Any non-true-bypass pedal - powered, but not necessarily "on" - will do that for you.
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Old 09-03-2015, 10:53 AM   #12
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I record all of my guitars into line inputs. With most interfaces, the difference in gain is about 10db, and it usually doesn't make enough of a difference in S/N to be noticeable over the guitar itself. You do want to make sure the guitar is buffered before it hits that hole though or you'll lose a lot of treble - almost exactly like turning down the T knob on your guitar. Any non-true-bypass pedal - powered, but not necessarily "on" - will do that for you.
Thanks, ashcat.
Basically, if I understand correctly, I'd have to use a guitar pedal as if it was a DI Box to impedance match the signal from my guitar?
Too bad I don't have a pedal of any kind, nor a DI box.
I think I'm better off just buying a new interface at this point, because I don't need that kind of hardware (I don't even play live) but I do need an audio interface.
Any suggestion is greatly appreciated!
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Old 09-03-2015, 10:58 AM   #13
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Maybe you should think about a preamp on the guitar, or an active di-box which might work as a preamp too. The levels can be controlled much better if they are not at the lowest end.
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Old 09-03-2015, 11:10 AM   #14
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Maybe you should think about a preamp on the guitar, or an active di-box which might work as a preamp too. The levels can be controlled much better if they are not at the lowest end.
Unfortunately I think that with the price of something like that I could afford a new very basic interface, which is all I need since I record in my bedroom and I don't play live.
A used interface with one or two inputs can be purchased for less than 100 euros while a good DI Box would cost only a little less.
I don't know about a preamp but I think that first I should use an interface that works properly.
I don't know, I always kept things very basic so I'm not familiar with that kind of hardware.
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Old 09-03-2015, 11:33 AM   #15
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...If the speaker is REALLY close to the guitar. If you can't get a foot away from your speaker then you've got bigger problems.
i can get visible (on the meters) and audible sounds from the pickups in TEN foot distance. no problem. and i´m not running high-gain at all
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Old 09-03-2015, 02:27 PM   #16
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i can get visible (on the meters) and audible sounds from the pickups in TEN foot distance. no problem. and i´m not running high-gain at all
Tap your pickguard with your finger. Do you hear that?
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Old 09-04-2015, 01:15 AM   #17
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4 instruments, 2 of them without pickguard.
1 active, 3 passive. humbuckers on all of them, singlecoils on 2.

every instrument with any pickup soaks up the speaker´s induction, and puts it out again through an amp / ampsim.

but only one of them does spit out loud thumping, when i tap the volume knob. i like it though, and even use it in a song.
the others are dead silent, except for the movement of the pickups when hitting them directly (works like vibrating strings, only that it´s the pickup itself).
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Old 09-04-2015, 02:20 PM   #18
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Well, I did a quick experiment with one of my guitars and I did get some bleed.

I'm not completely convinced that it's actually inductive for the simple reason that the results for both SC and HB mode were very similar. A humbucker is pretty specifically designed to reject that kind of EM interference, and while they're never perfect, there should be a significant reduction which should be somewhat frequency dependent and tend to kill the lower frequencies first. You'd also think that it would be at least a somewhat directional pickup that I didn't really notice much either.

I didn't get too far into it or particularly scientific about it, and I'm not sure how to conduct a truly definitive test for this. I'd like to try it with a bare pickup removed from the guitar entirely to at least reduce some of the variables, but at this point I can't say for sure either way, so I'll take back some of my above criticism until I can investigate further.
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Old 09-04-2015, 04:07 PM   #19
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doesn´t matter if you mute the strings or not, electromagnetics from a speaker´s voice coil will get picked up.
I want to be suspicious of that with any kind of decent distance at all since I can simply mute my strings and talk loudly into the pickups and it records it. I just tested it but already knew it simply from recording for decades, sometimes I use it as part of the composition. Nevertheless, that completely removes speaker electromagnetics from the equation in my test since the speakers weren't even on.

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the problem persists even with all of the guitar's knobs turned completely off
That makes me think its the device forward to an extent since the guitar being all the way down is very close to ground. I think you could isolate and find out what it is and my money is on crosstalk in the M-Audio between the outgoing and incoming signals.
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Old 09-04-2015, 04:39 PM   #20
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Quote:
Quote:
the problem persists even with all of the guitar's knobs turned completely off
That makes me think its the device forward to an extent since the guitar being all the way down is very close to ground. I think you could isolate and find out what it is and my money is on crosstalk in the M-Audio between the outgoing and incoming signals.
Yeah, with most guitars, turning the V pot down shorts the cable, so that it should not be able to pick up any noise or interference at all or transmit anything coming from the pickups. With some other guitars, it shorts the pickup itself. Either way, the crosstalk pretty much can't be coming from the pickups at this point.
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Old 09-05-2015, 01:38 AM   #21
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Yeah, with most guitars, turning the V pot down shorts the cable, so that it should not be able to pick up any noise or interference at all or transmit anything coming from the pickups. With some other guitars, it shorts the pickup itself. Either way, the crosstalk pretty much can't be coming from the pickups at this point.
It must be a defect of my interface.
As Ollie pointed out, the old Fast Track had that problem. I've found complaints about it after googling it.

I'm already looking to buy a new interface, because I don't have any idea of how I could I fix it.
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Old 09-05-2015, 09:35 AM   #22
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Sorry but this is driving me crazy.

I was going to replace my Fast Track with a Lexicon Alpha, but here's what the specs of the latter say:

"Crosstalk <-74dB any input or output to any recording channel,
20Hz - 20kHz <-95dB at 1kHz typical"

It seems a little too much. I'm afraid I would just get the problem worse.
Now, is there a way to cope with a tiny amount of crosstalk, especially recording hi-gain guitars, like recording less hot or something? Or do I have to buy a more expensive interface?
Thanks again to anybody willing to help.
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Old 09-05-2015, 10:03 AM   #23
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It might be as simple as monitoring at a lower volume and/or gain staging your I/O so that it never triggers the gate. I'd at least play with that idea before replacing it with something of lesser or equal value.

However, it seems like you could just gate it after the fact and simply not worry about it leaking when recording since the actual audio on the track will only consist of the undistorted clean guitar. IOW, when monitoring while recording, what gets/doesn't get gated isn't being recorded unless you are specifically using inputFX instead of postFX. That way, the crosstalk isn't even in the picture when mixing.
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Old 09-05-2015, 11:33 AM   #24
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It might be as simple as monitoring at a lower volume and/or gain staging your I/O so that it never triggers the gate. I'd at least play with that idea before replacing it with something of lesser or equal value.
That's what I'm thinking. I want to delve a little bit more into the problem before throwing away more money.

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However, it seems like you could just gate it after the fact and simply not worry about it leaking when recording since the actual audio on the track will only consist of the undistorted clean guitar. IOW, when monitoring while recording, what gets/doesn't get gated isn't being recorded unless you are specifically using inputFX instead of postFX. That way, the crosstalk isn't even in the picture when mixing.
I'm not sure I understand what you mean.
I was using a noisegate in my chain but the peaks caused by the bleeding into the guitar track would make it open. Therefore I had to raise the threshold so much (-60db at least) that the quiet notes I played would get cuf off too.
To eliminate the bleeding with gain staging I basically have to keep everything so quiet that it's very difficult to play.
Besides, the problem would be there again at mixing, especially when applying compression on the master bus.

I can't see a solution other than editing out the bleed after recording, but that would be really difficult.
Imagine manually editing out noise between staccato notes or in the middle of a solo.
Thank you for chiming in, anyway!
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Old 09-05-2015, 11:35 AM   #25
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I can't see a solution other than editing out the bleed after recording, but that would be really difficult.
Because if you are recording by plugging the guitar into the interface, then using JSFX as your distortion on the track, the gating is only what you are hearing, *not* what is being recorded. What is being recorded is just the clean guitar sound with no gating or distortion. Later, when you play back the result, the input to the soundcard is no longer being used so the crosstalk won't exist then.

The exception would be if you used "InputFX" (the feature) instead of the normal FX button which means what you hear is what gets recorded but you didn't infer you were doing that so I'm thinking you are just fine and being thrown by what you are hearing vs what is actually being recorded.

You can test this for yourself. Record 30 seconds of distorted guitar, play it back and disable the JSFX distortion and gate, the signal should then be the original clean unaffected guitar tone. If that is the case, it would be impossible for the gating to be part of the recording.
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Old 09-05-2015, 11:59 AM   #26
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Because if you are recording by plugging the guitar into the interface, then using JSFX as your distortion on the track, the gating is only what you are hearing, *not* what is being recorded. What is being recorded is just the clean guitar sound with no gating or distortion. Later, when you play back the result, the input to the soundcard is no longer being used so the crosstalk won't exist then.

The exception would be if you used "InputFX" (the feature) instead of the normal FX button which means what you hear is what gets recorded but you didn't infer you were doing that so I'm thinking you are just fine and being thrown by what you are hearing vs what is actually being recorded.

You can test this for yourself. Record 30 seconds of distorted guitar, play it back and disable the JSFX distortion and gate, the signal should then be the original clean unaffected guitar tone. If that is the case, it would be impossible for the gating to be part of the recording.
I don't get it. If I record straight into the interface and there's leakage from the output to the input, the leakage will get recorded no matter what, right?
So at any stage of the project that leakage would be present.

I've actually recorded some parts. If I disable the FX, I hear the dry guitar AND the leakage from other tracks, although almost impercepible.

I'm sorry if I missed something but at this point I'm starting to feel very stupid.
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Old 09-05-2015, 05:51 PM   #27
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I'm sorry if I missed something but at this point I'm starting to feel very stupid.
Nope, that was my mistake actually. For some reason I was only considering what you were hearing. Sorry for the diversion and lack of coffee.
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Old 09-06-2015, 01:21 AM   #28
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Nope, that was my mistake actually. For some reason I was only considering what you were hearing. Sorry for the diversion and lack of coffee.
No problem! Thanks anyway.
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Old 09-06-2015, 06:44 AM   #29
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i can get visible (on the meters) and audible sounds from the pickups in TEN foot distance.
For tracking I've found that a wireless keyboard and wireless headphones are useful. You can sit at a good distance away from your computer, monitors, power supplies etc, and the key commands for recording are so minimal that you can do a take, save it or not, and go as many times as you like, all at a safe distance from your electronics.
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