Spectrum Analyzer showing sound when not playing

Yeah I know right... I guess a little white noise in my drums ain't gonna kill me. Was just tripping me out wondering what in my whole process or equipment was causing it and how to isolate it so it doesn't keep happening in the future.

Honestly the advice ive given isnt good for dnb, im yet to make my own advice work in dnb anyway. other genres i find anomoly in sound an added bonus but im going for analog sound usually. But as you said if its not making the mix muddy then yeah sure its no issue.

A mastering engineer will now step in and tell me im wrong and hed be right... i produce i dont master so i cant argue with that.
 
Honestly the advice ive given isnt good for dnb, im yet to make my own advice work in dnb anyway. other genres i find anomoly in sound an added bonus but im going for analog sound usually. But as you said if its not making the mix muddy then yeah sure its no issue.

A mastering engineer will now step in and tell me im wrong and hed be right... i produce i dont master so i cant argue with that.
For sure. Clean and crisp is what I was hoping for in the drums I was making. Although I've added a fair amount of saturation, I've done it in a way to not add a real "distorted" sound to it.

If I had never seen the said "noise" in the spectrum analyzer wile the audio wasn't playing, I probably would have never turned up the volume up a ton to hear it fully and just assumed it was some random speaker static or buzz. So it's not to dirty, just makes me feel kinda dirty knowing it's there. Lol
 
I’m working on some drums in Ableton. I have multiple virtual drum samplers in the project. The drum samplers have individual hits routed out to their own Ableton channel\track with processing plugins on them. Then some of those hits from multiple drum samplers (kicks, snares) are routed together for further processing, then all channels (cymbals, room, overhead) routed again to a final Ableton channel\track with further processing on it.

When the track is not playing, my spectrum analyzer shows movement. If I turn the volume on the audio interface up real high I can hear this static\white noise sound. The routing processes all end up in one final Ableton channel\track. If I turn that track off, the spectrum analyzer shows no signal\sound and I cannot hear the static anymore.
So I did some investigation I thought would give me the answer.

1) I thought it would be one or some of the 3rd party plugins I was using, so I turned them all off... but the static\white noise was still there.

2) Then I thought it could be the virtual drum samplers, so I turned them all off.... but the static\white noise was still there.

3) Then I thought hey, maybe it's my audio interface or some ghost in the circuit and it's always been there, I just never noticed it before. So I opened up a completed track I had made previously.... but the spectrum analyzer showed nothing at all when the track was not playing.


The static\white noise also is not stagnant; it will kinda jump up\down in decibels here and there.... like every 2-6 seconds, but not on an exact pattern.


I’m using Ableton 8.2.1 atm. Can anyone give me some ideas of what could be going on here? Has anyone experienced this kind of thing before in Ableton (or even another DAW)?

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I have managed to solve this problem. Check it out now, the funk soul brothers!

I had the same problem using external audio device. Multiple channel routing in Ableton created this background hiss, which drove me crazy. I also noticed that with every new audio channel (acting as a receiving channel) being added to the routing chain, the noise bacame louder. In one of my projects it was so loud that it was overlapping the music. I'd been giving a lot of thought trying to figure out what might have caused the noise. And then one day an idea struck my mind. I immediately launched one of my projects where I had several routing chains who caused super loud white noise, made a few mouse clicks and the noise disappeared.
Below I try to explain how the whole thing worked out.

Let’s say we have 4 audio channels: piggy1, piggy2, piggy3 and HOUSE. We want to rout the first three channels to the HOUSE channel, which would act as our mixbuss. After routing our piggies to the HOUSE, on the HOUSE channel we have to switch the “IN” button for it to receive audio from the piggies. And that’s where the white noise WOLF kicks in.

I noticed that there was no hiss when I switched ableton to my computer’s sound card, so I thought that it might had something to do with inputs on my external audio device. In all audio channels in ableton “Audio from” defaults to “Ext. in” – “ch.1”. When you use an external audio device and there is no guitar or electric jew’s harp connected to it, and you switch the “IN” button on any audio channel, it engages an empty input on the external device which results in white noise.
So, if you use audio channels as mixbusses, who receive audio from here and there in your mix, you should change “Ext. in” on your mixbuss to “No input”, thus it would receive audio only from audio channels being routed to it and not from an empty input on your external device. This, in turn, makes the three little piggies feel safe and secure in their house.

There is probably a better explanation on this in Ableton manual, but you and I usually don’t have time to read them)).


Hope this helped. Cheers!
 
I'll have to give that a shot. It makes sense while reading it. Haven't opened that one project in a while, but I think I still have it.

It seemed at the time fabfilter saturn was the main culprit in the noise addition, but it's been a while since I've investigated it again.
 
I'm not a crazy audio head with a golden ear like a lot of people, but I personally think that fabfilter makes one of the best EQ's on the market.

That's definitely the plug in by them that I use the most. And I don't even have version two yet, which I hear is even better.
 
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