Why Is There Hiss on CD Its Digital!!

No sign of this noise on my copy of same album. Maybe it's just a poor copy ?

All

Thanks for the reply.

That's strange

On my system sound is open, detailed and voices have good image and well placed.

Everything is crystal clear but never harsh with good leading edge deffinition.

I think its the detail and clarity that reveals the hiss.

On my second budget system its not so obvious but with headphones you can hear it.

HiFiKid

HiFiKid,

By the way what system do you have? No mention in your profile.

Graham

HiFiKid,

It is tape hiss... it was recored to analogue tape and, if it was done the same way as Band of Joy, it was mixed using vintage analogue gear as outboard to a protools session.

And my guitar amp hums too...

Andy

Hi Hifikid, hiss or noise can can be from many sources such as mixing electronics, reverbs and compressors, electronic instruments, microphones etc, also there is digital quantisation noise when mixed and processed in the digital domain, less obvious that it used to be but sometimes noticeable. I quite often notice a low level hiss that fades out at the end of a track.. it doesn't really bother me.. some mastering techniques use heavy companding and gating  which suppresses low level  signals when there is not much audio.. The opposite of compression, such tracks can sound very clean with little hiss but sometimes a bit sterile or processed.

HiFi Kid

I love tape hiss.

And you shoud, too!

BTW, if you listen to Led Zep and you can hear a squeak, don't worry it's just Bonam's peddle.

My point being that recordings containing hiss, hum, buzz, squeak, bottles of wine rattling etc, these things should not be "edited out". 

+1

As per Andy Too, this most definitely is an analogue recording, on an analogue mixing desk onto two inch analogue tape.

T Bone-Burnett (the producer) prefers to record on analogue equipment and generally produces records that have a retro, organic, anlaogue, muddy, swampy etc feeling to them.  

HiFiKid,

So... do the hiss and hum actually spoil it for you?

I'm intrigued - I'm engineering (ha!) recordings for my son's band at the moment and we're deliberately adding analogue-style distortions to make the whole thing sound more real. It's certainly not unusual in many genres, though not many have access to the 'real' analogue gear that T-Bone Burnett does!

Andy

Rip it and use Izotope or Soundsoap and you'll be rid of that hiss forever ... I don't like hiss, pops, cracks, whistles, crowd noise or, ... in fact I'm a miserable s..... 

Yes it does, if its a bum note or hum from a live recording or other noise that form part of the artists playing thats fine, but what is the point haveing a quality system for listening to music if hiss etc can be heard when I am sure it could be removed.  My other hifi friends feel the same. On cassette companys spent a fortune developing Dolby to remove it when playing the tape so why leave it on a cd, makes no sense to me.  If its not part of the performance it shouldn't be there.

Hi

If its a analogue recording why can't it be removed when its transfered to digital?

I actually tend to prefer live recordings [of classical music] to studio, when everything goes well. The swing of a great real time performance and its building tension cannot be replicated completely in the studio, where the are many halts, retakes, and edits ... Live recordings always contain extraneous noises, such as a player perhaps clipping the music stand with his bow, or a member of the audience coughing, even the sound of an a pipe organ, electrical bellows, or clack of a particular pedal mechanism. None are distracting from the music when the music making is great, but ...

There is absolutely no reason to tolerate any noise from the recording mechanism that was not part of the musical performance - live or studio based ...

Never ...

Even the surface noise of 78s can now be entirely removed without damaging the musical performance, so simple tape hiss, cannot EVER be excused. It is really easy to remove in the digital domain.

ATB from George

Because it seems it's nigh on impossible to remove hiss without removing something else in the recording too.  Give the choice between a straight transfer and a "cleaned up" one, I invariably prefer the straight one. 

I was reminded of this when transcribing some of my '60s reel tapes to 24/192 digital.  Some of these tapes were recorded live with very simple micing and just sound so alive - they were taken straight off one of the copy masters onto Ampex tape, quite often in real time.  The sense of space and the dynamics can come as quite a shock!  However you also get a fair bit of tape hiss too - quite a bit more than modern commercial digital transcriptions of the same music.  Which leads one to conclude that they have been "cleaned up" by the digital engineers.  Trouble is, the CDs sound pretty flat and shut-in compared to the reel tape.  Deterioration of the master/copy master??  Or has the modern studio processing lost something?  I don't know.  However, I do know that my own attempts to "clean up" the hiss via modern PC programs invariably resulted in some of the life and dynamics going AWOL.  No free lunch here.

HiFIKid

I don't know why it can't be removed, but I've bought quite a few CD's over the years that suggest why it isn't. They've had a note on the sleeve indicating hiss hasn't been removed to preserve the fidelity of the recording. Hiss probably can be removed but in doing so you pay the price.

By coincidence today I bough a Sony TC158SD cassette corder. It's described as professional quality costing about £400 in the 70's, I've hooked it up to my Naim system, tried fe, Cr and metal tapes, no matter what the bias, nr or tape type setting I can't get it to hiss.

Richard

Great minds think alike, pity yours is a bit faster.

visiting sun records a few years ago and at the time they were doing the maintenance of mixing desk and analogue.  whilst taLking to the guys ,I asked them what band/artist were impossible to work with .   reply    U2  Analogue is best even with the hiss 

For classical music I might tend to agree with George, with the caveat that older analogue recordings might still sound more musical if not cleaned up.

It's genre-dependent though. For much music you can't divorce the equipment and production choices from the music per-se. People record to analogue tape because they like the subtle (and sometimes not-so-subtle) harmonic and dynamic distortions it introduces. And if they don't have the real thing, they will use a tape saturation plugin to emulate it.

I'm not too happy with how 'loud' I'm having to mix my son's band either - I've got a soft limiter on the end of the chain and it's hitting that pretty hard most of the time - but if I don't it sounds nothing like commercial 'reference' mixes and the 'clients' - ie their friends - won't think it's any good!

Ah well...

Andy

Tape hiss is generally better than most music recorded these days...

I have CDs where the hiss is the best part of the album.

That being said, "Raising Sand" is a very good album.

My advice to HiFiKid: sell all your Naim kit, and buy new Naim kit, then listen to CD again.

I have CDs (and LPs) where tape his is ALL of the album

Or should they put a note on the sleeve indicating hiss hasn't been removed because they couldn't be bothered ... I have a few CDs like that ... and do I not like them ... however packages like the one I recommended above seem to do what the labels didn't .... 

As Grace Slick once said: I don't care if there's chemicals on it as long as my lettuce is crisp. 

I agree with George ... no sss hiss sss thank sss you sss very sss much sss

Perhaps they should do two versions to keep us all happy ... I'm trying to set up Izotope to remove the drum sound on some Genesis albums, but no luck so far 

All the best, Guy

I'm trying to set up Izotope to remove the drum sound on some Genesis albums, but no luck so far 

All the best, Guy

Let me know if you get that to work, Guy.  We'll get you working on removing Yoko from the Lennon catalogue.

As Richard has pointed out, de-noising progs have a tendency to chuck out the baby with the bath-water. Sympathetic remastering engineers leave tape hiss IN!

On the recently remastered 'Aqualung' by Steven Wilson, he refers in the sleeve notes to the audible tape hiss being part of the character of the original recording, so he had the good sense to leave it be.

John.

I simply don't get it that hiss somehow adds to the experience, but I do get that removing it must inevitably degrade some of the musical signal. Leave it in, but don't add it artificially would be my advice.

I actually don't really agree with recording engineers adding/removing anything to the musicians' sound. It's one thing to use a vintage Marshall or (perhaps, just) using a distinctive old microphone for a specific sound, but recording on ancient valve gear or hissy tape just for the extra "atmosphere" is a bit silly. Even worse is adding these effects post-recording using digital tools.