[52-6F-62]

> home office style recording environments (even with acoustic panels) are going to have a noticeable amount of background hiss (computer fans, etc.) get picked up and his set up doesn't account for that.

You can definitely baffle a lot/all of that noise away, but you definitely need to be more mindful of your setup and not just have some wall-mounted panels and your tower right next to your mic.

I've been privy to some crafty home studio setups. It's workable—the first problem is paying attention/having an ear and the example you posted is so obvious I was surprised at it.

[nickjj]

> the example you posted is so obvious I was surprised at it.

Yeah I was surprised too. Considering that clip is from the author of the post.

> you definitely need to be more mindful of your setup and not just have some wall-mounted panels and your tower right next to your mic.

Mine is on the floor, under my desk, which has a large thick piece of wood (the desktop) as a barrier and it still comes through without a noise gate. My mic is on a boom arm like 5 feet above my tower (I use a standing desk) and the mic is positioned opposite of my computer to further reduce it picking it up.

Also, a lot of people use laptops as their main computer which is even worse. Chances are you'll end up with your laptop on the top of your desk instead of below it.

That's why I was so taken back by him creating this article without mentioning noise cancellation.

Fortunately I do have the DBX and the noise floor is almost silent without clamping down too hard on natural frequencies. I've recorded about 400 videos, some with the DXB and some without and there's such a huge difference.

[52-6F-62]

A single wooden panel won't do much to help you in that situation regardless. It's a great reflector and wouldn't absorb much of the noise, especially of the sides are wide open.

Most people, especially someone just recording dev screencasts or video conferencing don't at all need a $300-350 preamp. It just seems like so much overkill. You could get perfectly usable noise reduction baked into Audacity, or with $50 plugin if the noise is existing.

FWIW, I record (music) with a laptop on my desk, sometimes multi channel simultaneously and with the right mics[1] and sufficient ambient noise reduction I've never had an issue with fan hiss or hum.

[0] https://www.waves.com/plugins/z-noise

[1] https://www.shure.eu/musicians/discover/educational/polar-pa...

[nickjj]

> Most people, especially someone just recording dev screencasts or video conferencing don't at all need a $300-350 preamp. It just seems like so much overkill. You could get perfectly usable noise reduction baked into Audacity, or with $50 plugin if the noise is existing.

I do record dev screencasts. Using Audacity is ok but it's extremely tedious if you record a lot of videos.

That means for every video you create you need to split and export your audio, import it into Audacity, get a noise sample, filter it out, export the new audio, import it back into your video editor and then edit as planned.

That work flow will drain your soul if you're trying to record a 150 video course, or you put out new videos every day.

Some video editors like Camtasia, Screenflow and Resolve have decent enough noise cancellation filters where you can press 1 button and wait 10 seconds to avoid having to do that with Audacity, but it also means if you ever do live streaming you'll need to set up a different type of VST with OBS, otherwise your live streams will sound bad.

But you're right, for starting out I wouldn't bother with any of that. That's why I think the AT2005 is a great mic for $80 bucks. It works over USB on its own but it also has XLR support so you can "grow" into it if you decide to use hardware to save time later. The DBX is a lot more than a $300 pre-amp btw.