So, I recently got a new laptop and I noticed that my interface picked up a lot of excess noise. At the start I thought it was picking up coil whine, but I tested the problem and it seems that the interface itself is noisy.
I did test it with the old laptop - the same results.
I don’t know if I simply didn’t notice it before or it has appeared lately, but it’s way too much to just be from the high gain amp vsts.
Any idea of what is going on?
Tried to add a sample, but I’m new here, so I can’t, but it’s appearant even when nothing is plugged in the interface. If someone can pm me and post the link for me, I would be grateful.
hi krisxmelderis
welcome to the steinberg forums.
What do you mean by ‘picked up a lot of excess noise’ - I’m assuming you don’t mean ‘mechanical noise’ …the unit itself ‘humming’ or ‘buzzing’
how are you measuring the noise ?
I assume you are using a guitar plugged in
(and yes you can post clips - try again)
Once you read and/or post a bit you’ll get er… “upgraded” abilities. 
Are you saying that the noise is being recorded? That is not normal. If the noise is just on the outputs, that’s a different matter.
The example of input running trough high gain amp, it’s just the input, no instrument plugged in:
so start a new blank project - and set up an single input channel from your UR12 - DO NOT plug anything into the UR12
what do the meters on the input channels in cubase show ?
It isn’t audible with out any gain tho, which is even more confusing and why I thought it was caused by another part of my rig, but I’ve recorded hi gain guitars for years and I have never had so much noise that isn’t regular string noise n poop.
you need to work backwards if you want to find out if the noise is ‘normal’ or not. I couldn’t find any noise figures for that interface.
If you do what I said in my previous post - you’ll be able to see what the background noise level is from the interface with nothing plugged in. (although noise has a frequency profile so it’s not 100% accurate)
I’d be interested to see what that number is.
It goes from -89 to -74, no gain to max input gain for instrument input and -81 to -53 for mic input.
those are not great figures (-53 is pretty poor) - but that is max gain. -89 isn’t bad at all
-81 is less noisy than a lot of valve preamps though, I’m sure you’ve been though this but have all your tests been in the same place, are you using single coil p/us ?
I use HB’s, I’ve tested in two different locations, at my apartment and my parents house, I’ve tested on two different computers, the noise is the same. At this point it’s either interface or I’m just imagining things. 
I might have to borrow another interface from a friend to compare tho, otherwise this is driving me nuts.
I don’t think the interface is faulty - I think it doesn’t have great signal/noise performance - but it’s not totally horrendous (from those numbers you posted)
I’d be interested to see what another interface would do - so please report back when you’ve tested.
I will, thanks buddy! 
sorry I couldn’t pin down an obvious fault
Yeah but measuring xlr input should not be done with an open input but with a 150 ohm resistor I think.
depends on the design of the preamp obviously but even a floating input should be better than that (IMO)
I agree that it’s important to follow good engineering principles but sometimes, for the sake of debugging an issue, it’s worth taking shortcuts.
Agreed:)
So @krisxmelderis , maybe you could record the “silence” at say min gain, gain at noon and max gain, then export three stems? No plugins of course. I will do the same with my UR22 MkII and we should get the same ballpark noise (I would think) when running through a hi gain amp. Btw which one are you using?
Here’re the clips:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1xfDo-oDkvnQLO0pWZmDZSfPH685RZ7OW?usp=sharing
I’ve tested with Neural DSP Nolly one and STL Will Putney one.
Perfect!
One more thing, do you have Hi-Z enabled or disabled? Just askinf so that I can do comparabe files…
Yeah, it’s HiZ input, I don’t think u can disable it on my unit.