Studio Issues or How I Became an Amateur Engineer

There was a puzzling problem with a voice-over I did late last week. The client could hear faint music in the background. I could not. But as we know, my hearing isn’t top-notch so I checked with a couple of other people and they couldn’t hear it either. 

I had recorded several projects that day and the other clients were all happy with the work. So what was going on? I asked the client to listen to the file on a different system because I suspected it was something at his end. He reported back that the pop-dance music was still there. It was getting ridiculous.

I re-recorded the entire script on Derek’s computer and sent that in.  High fives all around. But I still had this seemingly non-existent issue to deal with in my recording gear.

Downstairs I went to my voice-over lair and isolated some of the blank space between sentences in the voice-over.  I boosted the levels to a ridiculously high number of dbs expecting to hear nothing but hissing. But I heard it. Extremely faint music. I couldn’t believe my ears. This guy must be using the most sensitive equipment ever if I and two others with far superior hearing couldn’t detect it.  So what to do about this problem that’s so unusual, I’ve never heard about it in 30+ years of recording sound?

Job one was to figure out what the heck could be making music. It had to be something electrical, like bare wires. The first suspect was a little clock radio I had plugged into the wall.  It’s always set to the comedy station to keep me laughing while I do mundane tasks such as balance my bank accounts, but it does act a little strangely. The levels boost significantly if you put your hand on it so the antenna doesn’t even work. It’s a piece of crap, frankly. I unplugged it, recorded some blank sound with the mic on and boosted it way up. Nothing.  Or so I thought as I carried on for another day or so.

On Monday I sent another recording to this same client, Mr. Super Hearing, the only one who has noticed this issue. He said the  music was back. The top of my head nearly blew off.  Derek took control of the situation. It was about gizmos after all, and I freely admit that’s guy stuff. One at a time, we removed components. First, I tried recording on my laptop instead of the desktop. Music. In fact we could even tell it was Virgin radio of London. After about an hour of removing and replacing the mic, the cords, etc. we finally found the problem.  My pre-amp, the little box that boosts the mic level and takes it to the computer, was somehow picking up the radio frequency. This thing is less than a year old.  I really wanted to stomp on it with my heel but I refrained. Fortunately Derek also bought a new and different pre-amp last year that he doesn’t use, and it doesn’t pick up radio stations, so I was back in business without much of a delay.

The client stuck with me through this frustrating and embarrassing situation. He was awesome and supportive. I got lucky!

I did wonder how long this little-heard but still annoying problem had being going on. However, I’ve decided not to check back on my old files. I’ve been getting regular jobs from my auditions so I’m going to go with the assumption that the faint Katy Perry and Robin Thicke had carried on for just a couple of days.  Knowing otherwise would not do me any good now. In this case, a little ignorance is bliss!