Strange Distortion in Playback

Forum|Forum|6 years ago
November 25, 2019
1 reply
507 views

Hi All,

For a couple of weeks now I've experienced a bit of "low buzz" on playback of vocal recordings. It doesn't appear to be distortion or clipping from overmodulation (my level never appears to peak or play into the red area of the recorded level meter). I have mp3s recorded of the distortion if anyone wants to diagnose them from the sound.

On the second zoomed in pic below, you can see odd, jagged lines in the vocal tracking. Any idea what's going on? Thanks in advance, I'll keep an eye out for you.

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Bobbo1969Author

Participant

I've also attempted to copy a link for the file here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1XFL4B7Agi3B8QXXNEU_qHcVuaG0ikbBh

Any idea what could be causing this? Again, thanks.

SteveG_AudioMasters_

Community Expert

Hard to say, but it sounds very much like a fault in the mic itself - or possibly it's overdriving the preamp (turn the gain down a bit and see if that helps). Do you have another mic you can try, for a start? That would start to eliminate some of the possibilities. Have to say though that this really does sound a bit 'mechanical', if you see what I mean...

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Bobbo1969Author

Participant

Thanks Steve, I've chased it down to that PCs in/ and out/puts, and they're attached to an HD Matchbox switcher, for both IN and OUT signals from left and right channels. What's weird is that that channel on the board has a CAT-5 input line, and whenever it's plugged in, there is a noticeably loud hum--even when the PC is powered down. By the way, when monitoring sound from the same computer from a DIFFERENT source than a recording made on CC Audition, the signal is clear and clean and prestine.

I'm not the engineer for the program (just a producer for creative, et cetera), but it would seem possible those issues are either connected or coming from the same source. Long ago, we replaced an amp in a different studio, and it fixed a very similar problem. I think I'll have our guy look at that.

I appreciate your response very much! Thank you.

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