Need Refresher on Recording Synth

[Kenny B]

So today I plugged in my 1995 K2000 synth and went directly from the outputs into my Great River Preamp. and noticed a pretty hissy sounding input. I don't recall if in years past the synth would have so much high end hiss, but I just went ahead and recorded. My question, what can I do to knock down the hiss on input and get a cleaner sound? I had the K2000 output volume control on about 7 with my Great River set to 40 db of Gain. Did not use the pad which will cut back 15 db if used.

Also, I had this device in the shop recently to have it cleaned and serviced. No crackly sounds but a lot of hiss.

[James Steele]

Hmmm... beats me, but I always thought you wanted to get the hottest signal out of your synth that you could so that you had to use as little preamp as you needed. If your synth is line level, I don't understand why you'd need so much boost with your preamp? Not sure. Did you try setting the K2000 volume to 10 and then using less gain on your pre? Might even try going directly into a line input on your audio interface? A lot of audio interfaces have a -10/+4 db setting and I find if I set that to -10db with some synths it might even overload on certain patches.

[bayswater]

Are you using the effects on the K2000? Those were really hissy. I always recorded mine dry and added effects later.

[James Steele]

Are you using the effects on the K2000? Those were really hissy. I always recorded mine dry and added effects later.

Ahhhh... that might be it. I had some synths that were similar and onboard effects introduced noise!

[mhschmieder]

It's been a while since I owned a Kurzweil keyboard from that era, but my recollection is that they had low output, so you might want to go through a good DI and/or preamp to get some clean boost going into the board. That's what I did.

[mhschmieder]

I do remember one Kurzweil model with hissy effects. I think I ended up going mono (was it the right channel for Kurzweil vs. the left for most vendors?) with proper summing and using outboard effects or plug-in effects, matching the on-board settings as close as I could if I was wed to them.