I recently linked back up with an old homie from Omaha, El Genius. We used to rock a lot of shows together, back in the day. He's a dope Emcee! He was headed out to Ashland, NE to meet up with some other homies, Phlame Classic and Jay Keys at Paradise Studios, to get started on a new song. I asked if I could tag along--I hadn't seen Phlame or Keys in a while, either--and that ended up being perfect, 'cause he needed a ride anyway. Blessings! We out!
Paradise is set all the way up. This ain't a homie-hookup studio; they run a business! I was telling Genius, on the way over, “it's like a bank building.” lol They got a PAIR of LA-2a's in there! It's lit! The lounge; everything! Manley Gold Ref mic--they stay ready!
We pulled up, and it was on! Genius and Keys went right to work after hugs exchanged, and me and Phlame got to talkin' shop. Two engineers talking FETs and transistors, frequency responses… It got geeky in that bitch real fast! He brought up something, so criminally under-discussed in our community, I thanked him for mentioning it the next day! NOISE!
When I first got into recording myself, I didn't think about it so much, because it was always there, in every recording, no matter what. Noise was ubiquitous, back then so, I guess, we all just tuned it out. Now, though, if I mix in the box, I can produce records with virtually no noise floor. It really brings things into perspective when you start adding outboard gear for a “hybrid” workflow. I forgot how noisy some of that old stuff was.
Nobody talks about that, though. Every so-called engineer on YouTube acts like hardware just automatically sounds better. Not if there's an audible hiss throughout the recording, in my not-so-humble opinion! I have, in-fact, Googled some of these guys' credits and heard that hiss with my own ears, bee-tee-dubs. It's real!
Don't get me wrong; not every hardware box is an angry housecat….but A LOT of them are….and NO ONE is talking about it publicly! You get good power conditioners; you troubleshoot out ground loops, etc.. You find little tricks, like, running line-level signals into mic inputs to skyrocket the input signal into orbit above the noise floor. Sometimes that's not even enough. You go back ITB then, I guess. Many have.