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Has anyone noticed noise on Piano Real Tracks?

I've experimented with these RT's: 831, 1701, 2049, 2117

There seems to be a hiss and/or a background rumble that I can detect on my KRK monitors and with headphones. I don't detect that same noise on other Real Tracks I'm working with. Violin or mandolin for example.

The noise is present on RT's in BIAB, in RB, and on those tracks imported to my DAW.

I don't rule out a hardware or settings problem, just starting here.

Thanks.

Yup. Some of the piano RT's have artifacts. (actually more obvious in the Audiophile version).

Whew! Thanks. All ear fatigue aside, I was starting to think I was hearing things:)

Sometimes the best of Piano, and certainly Bass tracks, when Solo'd, can sound like someone is workin' on a Buick in the background.

Proof of the pudding is how they sit in a mix.

If there are Silent parts, where the instrument does not play at the time, any background noise issues will come to the fore because of Signal to Noise ratio. Highlight those silent parts and edit them to true zero silence.


--Mac

This is noise contained within the audio. More present in the bass clef, I hadn't noticed it before.

No problem. I'll deal with it. Thanks.

I haven't heard this in a few years, but in the early days of RealTracks I would on occasion hear a superfluous noise (for example, a bang) that I reported to PG Music Support. They would patch it in the next RealTracks update.

If you listen to the raw RealTrack file itself, in the RealTracks folder, you can determine if there is something particularly annoying going on. If there is, report it.

I've heard this and attributed it to room noise picked up by the mic used to record the piano.

Its more evident when the piano is solo or nearly so.

Yeah, you're not hearing things..... it's there.

I've noticed something similar on one of the rock / blues organ tracks - slight distorion occasionally. I'll have to check which one it was and let PG know.

Thought it was my ears / phones as well until I swapped the phones around and the distortion moved to the other ear.

Such may be the result of mic'ing a Leslie cabinet with one mic at the horn level and another down below at the speaker rotor.

It is often the case that these two mics are panned a bit to either side, turning what is originally an "up/down" into a L/R on the soundstage.

When a Hammond Tonewheel Organ is set up for "grit" - typically accomplished by readjustment of the negative feedback capacitor inside the expression capacitor's circuit, and sometimes also with a bit of circuit tweaking of the Hamnmond Preamp as well, the distortion thus created will often first happen at the Horn, which is on a crossover at about 700Hz, leaving the lower bass speaker, typically a 15" woofer pointed downwards into the lower rotor, still sounding rather clean.

When the Blues/Rock Hammond Realtracks were introduced, this old B3 lover, with years at the helm behind him, immediately heard that the organ used for these tracks is of the type that is treasured by players of the roadhouse blues and rock genres, often they prefer a B or C model that has a lot of mileage on the tonewheel rotors, which translates to a different sound than the "tight" B3 sound preferred by most Jazz and players of other genres.

The famous rotary speaker Leslie cabinet also is known for certain sounds "other than the organ" emanating from the cabinet, often only noticeable when the organ is not being played, but not always, such as mechanical noise from the rotation motors, drivewheels, belt pulleys and belt tensioners. Not usually noticed in live performance work, easily spotted when a Leslie is close-mic'd as in the studio.

Matter of fact, many good Tonewheel Organ digital simulators come complete with user-selectable "models" that, while all being B3's, sound very different from each other. The venerable old Native Instruments B4 simulator at one time included an addon pack that allowed the user to choose from "worn" organs and "tweaked" Leslies for just this reason.

In the realworld, no two B3 organs sound exactly alike.

Blues players, Rock players and even some Gospel players often prefer the sound that comes from the older organs in which the capacitor banks were built using the old wax paper caps rather than the poly caps that were built into the organs starting sometime in the mid 60s. Grit, baby. And since each tonewheel has its own separate cap on the circuit, the variance of sound between each note is sometimes all over the place. A rather clean Bb note with a rather raspy D above it, things like that, which actually give the organ that "character".

Don't get hung up in the notion that all tracks MUST be entirely pristine, with the only sound being that of the instrument itself, in the real world, such is the exception and not the rule. Matter of fact, if a Rotary Organ track is "too clean" when solo'd, it is often the telltale sign of a MIDI patch or a poorly designed digital simulation in which the designers did not do what it would take to add the various configurations of distortion, overdrive when Expression pedal is floored but clean when lifted a bit, and perhaps one of the most difficult parameters to simulate authentically, the various mechanical sounds of the spinning rotors. There is also the Wind Noise of the spinning horn in there, too.

Again I attempt to tell folks that the bottom line is how the track sits in the mic, NOT what you hear when Solo'd. Of course, there do exist certain anomalies that may fall outside of these parameters, that would be things like a continuous buzz or hum on the track, which might indicate one of several electronic circuit problems or interferences, there could be certain background noises picked up by the mics - sometimes the performance on the track yields the decision to go with that take anyway, though, as the performance might be deemed to far outweigh the fact that the mics picked up someone coughing, or feet shuffling at one point, or whatever.

Experience with the mixdown of multitracked recordings is likely the missing ingredient with many of these kind of complaints, especially the experience of having to come in after the Tracking phase is completed, on a project you've never heard before and your task is to do the mixdown. First thing I always do in that situation is throw up all the faders, just to see what I've got. From there the task is to make the overall happen from the various tracks and worrying about little anomalies on one track out of a possible 24 won't get the job done - and more importantly, is not likely to be heard or noticed in the context of the full mix.

Signal to Noise is expressed as a Ratio for a reason...

In layman's terms, Signal to Noise means that a low amplitude level sound may stick out when the overall tracks are at a lower amplitude, but that same sound will actually "disappear" when all tracks in use are playing at realworld amplitudes.

Don't get too involved in the "hunt for noises on the RealTracka" unless you find one that actually stands out in the context of a full mix.


--Mac

Mac, As always, right on.------Leon

exactly. The other instruments can cover a multitude of issues. It is only a problem if that piano is playing with a solo voice and nothing else.

I just recently noticed it yesterday. I was working on some tracks and I thought someone was walking around upstairs. Its more than an artifact and will possibly make this particular project unusable.
WSS

I pretty much gave up with putting the RealTrack pianos in the forefront because of this. Because of the sustain pedal, it's often more obvious where cuts happen. In the mix, it sounds fine. Exposed... not so much.

Fortunately, I can often find MIDI tracks that come close. It's one of the few instruments where the MIDI replacements can be swapped in without losing too much.

But it was a huge disappointment, because there are some really lovely RealTrack pianos.

I've also had trouble with the mandolin as well.

As I mentioned, if it's that obvious (like hearing footsteps), identify the individual RealTrack and report it to PG Music Support. Individual RealTrack files aren't so long; you should be able to identify the time in the track where the offending sounds occur.

hey I don't know if this will be helpful or not, probably not, but I think I found the source of one of my problems. I was using one of the new age patches with acoustic guitar and added a piano track. I kept hearing something and something like someone was walking around upstairs. the drum track seemed to be empty so I didn't think about it but when I soloed it there was some noise every couple bars. Muted the drums and the sound went away.
WSS

There are some genres like a mystery movie sound track where the sound of someone walking around upstairs could come in handy...

Hi Mac.

Thanks for the very detailed reply, that was a very interesting explanation regarding the cabinet sounds themselves. I also take your point regarding the real world not being a clinically clean sound box.

I'll have another listen but I think the distortion crops up at one of those inconvenient points in the mix where everything else subdues. I need to play around with it.

Thanks again.
Mike.

If you are game, and if you are confident of your editing skills, try this.

Go into the BB folder and navigate to the real tracks and into the folder where the actual wave files are kept for the given style.

Play the files from that folder one by one listening carefully with good speakers. I used a 3rd party wave editor to do this initially.

Enlarge the wave form on the screen. At the ends of several of the held chords I was looking at, there was a little "blip" in the wave. It could have been the sound of the damper pedal being released, or someone bumped a mic stand, someone setting their beer glass down, or whatever. No matter the cause, it was there, audible, and visible.

Simply load that file into a DAW track, and use the editing tools available there to fade the chord a bit quicker so it is completely faded before it hits that "blip" at the end. Once satisfied, save that file back to it's original location.

You now have the same file but this time without the noise in the file.

Easy fix if you want to pick the nits and clean up the sound a bit at the source as opposed to fixing it in the mix.

Thanks Guitarhacker! I was going to recommend the same thing. I'll probably use Adobe Audition to edit my original RealTrack .wav files if I get to that point of needing to.

I know I can do that if I need to but so far, I can hide or edit the noise in the project track.