Otari mx5050 noise reduction?!?!

[psinglet]

Noise reduction on the mixdown deck won't help the original recording. The NR only works on the deck the signal is recorded on. The only help it would give would be to make a clean recording of the noise coming from the 5050. Sorry.

[joeysimms]

I can't help you with the Otari, but I don't much care for the NR that goes with my Tascam 48. The manual indicates that with NR engaged, it's really more like 2:1 compression, with an extreme limiter. Means it's almost impossible to pin the meter. My main problem with the NR is all the additional patching, plus that every track going to tape would have to be bumped down to an rca just to get in. Also, if you have a bunch of encoded reels and your NR takes a dump, you'll have to chase down another to hear your stuff. As far as the sound, I didn't notice that much difference with NR. It wasn't that much quieter. Maybe check your signal path and see if something there is adding the noise?

[psinglet]

I don't know if you know how dbx works, so here is a ten second explanation. A signal comes into the "encode" section where it goes through a compressor circuit, compressing the signal 2:1. It is recorded on tape compressed. When played back, it goes through the "decode" section, an expander (a milder form of noise gate), 1:2. Expansion ducks the background noise when decoding. End result (in theory): original dynamics with less noise.

Recording with encode and playing back without decoding is not always a pretty thing. Very compressed sounding. Might be annoying while doing overdubs, etc.

Playing back a bunch of tracks which haven't been decoded through a couple of channels of dbx, I don't know if it would work with all the different levels on mix-could mess with the "threshold" of the expander, since I would assume the dbx is expecting a certain level to decode properly. But they are all compressed at the same rate. Hmm...

I guess my answer to that would be to experiment and see if it works well enough for you. I wouldn't expect perfection. I would probably expect some pumping from the dbx. Just be sure that you are monitoring after the dbx, so you can accurately tell what it is doing to the signal. Good luck and let us know if it worked.

[biasvoltage]

I have an MX5050 and (4) DBX 180A noise reduction units, and it works quite well. You aren't going to be able to use the single noise reduction unit on your 2 bus during mixdown, because of what the untreated signal from each channel will sound like and interact with your EQ, effects, compressors, and so forth. Just pounce on them when you see them on EBAY, I never paid more than $15 for any one of my units.

The 150 series is unbalanced and the 180 is balanced; I didn't know about the Otari's quasi-balanced BS outputs when I started putting the NR rack together or I wouldn't have bought them. Still, they work fine, and have screw terminals on the back which made wiring up a patchbay that much cheaper. FYI, what I did for the patch bay was get a used 48 point TRS longframe patchbay (again, ebay) adn a 5 space rack (again, Ebay) and installed the 4 units and patchbay in the rack. the NR units are wired directly to the connections on the patchbay. I could have wired them directly to the recorder but wanted to be able to move the thing around without too much trouble.

There are a total of 32 patch points used: 8 to the recorder, 8 from the recorder, 8 to the mixer and 8 inputs. I bought some HOSA snakes (a trs to female xlr, trs to male xlr, and trs to trs for the mixer, all once again from ebay.) Total expenditure was probably $150 for the nr units, snakes, patchbay and rack, but it took 6 months of lucky ebay shopping to put it all together.

Then I started using 499 and don't use the NR as much.

oh well

cv