Hello, I'm very new to recording.org, but I love the family sense that I see around the site so I already feel at home.

This is the problem I'm having. I bought a Nady RSM-1 ribbon mic a couple of months ago and I'm working on starting up a home studio. Well, home studio is putting it loosely. It's more like a hole in the wall...almost.

This is the hardware I have right now...
Korg D4 track recorder
Nady RSM-1 ribbon mic
Prosonus TubePreamp
dbx 266XL Compressor/Gate (upon the advice of a good radio friend)

My goal is to start up a voice over business. I work in radio doing on-air work part-time. I tossed up the idea of starting this up and got warm encouragement from co-workers to go for it. So I started to buy equipment piece by piece.

Now, I will say I'm an amateur and there have been some interesting learning curves along the way.

Here's the problem. .whenever I record with the Nady, I get a lot of hiss and some light hum in the background. I've tried doing subtle adjustments with both the pre-amp and the compressor and got rid of the hum. The problem is with the hiss. It seems no matter what I do the problem is still there.

I've tried tweaking the levels on the Prosonus, but the closer I come to getting the levels to hit zero, the hiss and hum get nasty.

I've tried setting up a tight compression with the 266XL and it does make the quiet parts quiet, but the hiss comes back with a vengeance in the bits I'm talking.

I've tried a loose setting, but the hiss is still there. I've tried everything in between but no luck. I did find a sweet setting where the hiss floor was low, but so were the recording levels and when I increased them. The hiss was back.

I even swapped XLR mic cables hoping that would fix the problem, but no go.

I did test the ribbon mic at my church's studio when I first got it and didn't have hiss issues although I did have a low rumble on the hum.

Suggestions?

I'm probably going to make another trip out to Guitar Center to buy a studio condensor mic. To find one about in the 100 dollar price range since that's all my budget can stand. I can always eq the settings on my pc to treat and give a mic a good vibrant sound. (I know...nothing will ever be as good as a 500 dollar mic on up.)

I do eventually want to give the Nady another go later. I love the ribbon mics, and I want to desperately make this work.