Constant -85db white noise while recording (UR44)

Hello.

I’ve bought Steinberg UR44 just a week ago.

Everything was pretty good, but yesterday I found that there is a constant white noise sound in all of my recordings (usually I’m recording vocals in Cubase 5). It’s not just like hissing, it’s full range white noise from 1 Hz to 22 kHz in 44.1 mode. Noise is around -85db and it happens regardless of what I’m recording and current recording mode (96/32, 48/24 - same result), regardless of what is connected and what inputs do I use (Hi-Z/Mic/Line/Line5-6 - same result, white noise on all of them). I thought that this noise could be not that audible, but after all sound processing (compressor, EQ, saturation and especially overdrive/distortion and etc) I can hear it clearly even in final mix.

Unfortunately, it looks like it’s noise from ADC or any kind of electronic part of the audiointerface, since using 96/32 mode instead of 48/24 will strongly increase white noise’s bandwidth (~24 kHz at 48/24 and nearly endless in FabFilter Pro-Q’s analyser at 96/32). I’ve tested my UR44 in RMAA and its results are pretty bad for unknown reason. Then I tested my good ol’ M-Audio Audiophile 192 and it showed way much more better result, making some noise while recording in Cubase 5 at -105db as it should be.

How do I defeat this noise? :frowning: I loved everything about UR44, but this con kills all the pros for this device.

In Russian Federation you can return hi-tech piece even if you just didn’t like it in 7 days, while the shop from Saint-Petersburg where I’ve ordered UR44 allows to do it in 2 weeks. But if this white noise is real technical issue that shouldn’t happen at all (there is -103db normal noise in specifications) then I could be able to return this device without any kind of problems at all. So please, help me, guys. Thank you. :slight_smile:

I’ve tested my card in RMAA and results were really worrying since harmonic and intermodulation distortions were 20-30 times higher than in UR44’s reviews in the Internet. Furthermore, I’ve found another strange bug - white noise is getting way much louder on Input Channel 1 even if there is nothing plugged in.

So I’ve decided to return soundcard back to the online-shop.