• Registered: 2011-10-15
  • Posts: 51

Topic: Background hiss in my sound files...

I'm not entirely sure if this is anything to do with my hardware (HDSPe 9632, Senn HD650's) but I'd like to find out.

I tend to export to audio / render my music projects (mostly made up of VST instruments) in Sibelius at 24 bit, but there is always background hiss in the resulting rendered WAV sound files - needless to say there is no hiss when playing back the projects real-time in Sibelius.

But then strangely, if I play the WAV files back from within my DAW, Reaper, the background hiss is gone. But as soon as I play them using Windows Media Player, VLC media player or within Audacity, the hiss is back.

In fact, my entire digital music collection, all 320kbps mp3's either downloaded or ripped from CD's suffer the same background hiss to some variable degree. I assumed that was to do with the way they were recorded in the studio but now I'm thinking it could be my hardware - but then why is there no hiss in Reaper or Sibelius?

Any ideas? Many thanks.

  • Registered: 2011-10-15
  • Posts: 51

Re: Background hiss in my sound files...

I don't know if this helps at all, but after some playing around, I've discovered that if I change the sample rate in my DSP settings to anything other than 41000 or 48000 Hz, then the hiss disappears. For every audio file in my collection! Even at 32000Hz. But as soon as I choose 41000 or 48000, the hiss is back. So I guess that's my solution - but it would still be interesting to know why those two sample rates produce the hiss...? Is it a hardware bug with the HDSPe 9632?