Are you seeing any 'peak' or 'clip' lights on any of your equipment? These are warnings that a signal level is too high.Try moving the mic further away from the noise source. Is the distortion coming from a microphone? This could be caused by a very loud noise being too close to the mic.
Follow the entire audio pathway, beginning at the source (the source could be a microphone, tape deck, musical instrument, etc). If you can't measure the signal level, you'll have to do some deducing. Generally speaking, you should keep the level below about 0dBu at every point in the pathway. Ideally, you would want to measure the signal level at as many points as possible, using a VU (Volume Unit) meter or similar device. Minimising Distortionĭistortion can occur at almost any point in the audio pathway, from the microphone to the speaker. Once the component's maximum dynamic range is breached, you have distortion. Imagine that the windows above represent a pathway through a component in a sound system, and the waves represent the signal travelling along the pathway. These examples can be used as an analogy for any audio signal. In this case, the recording components can no longer accommodate the dynamic range, and the strongest portions of the signal are cut off. In the second example, the signal is amplified by 250%.
