I am already crying… 
But glad you sorted out the noise situation! 
You might then remember the homemade distortion pedals we used to build at that time. Metal stomp switches were hard to find, so most DIYers used flip switches. Instead of stepping to activate distortion, we had to swipe – and broke countless switches while playing live…
(Oh, gave my past century self away…)
Elk, you keep giving me new things to think about, LOL. Like for example RF noise. My PC that I’m using is in close proximity to a gateway, a modem and a router, plus a cell and two landlines and s—load of power cords and power bars. I wonder if all of that electromagnetism can be creating a bad audio aura for anything like the Dwarf to be operating in, at least via a USB connection to the PC??
Anyways, I’m super glad to hear that you’ve figured out how to kill the background noise dead. I’m not there yet myself, but at least there’s some hope it’s doable. I’m going to fidget a bit more with the various gain stages throughout my system and see if I can do the same.
Cheers
Frank
Glad to know that I’m not the only member of the half-century club here, LOL. I bet your homemade distortion pedal with flip switches kicked butt. You wouldn’t happen to still have it? There’s a market for rough-looking vintage gear, you know? Maybe you can go into production with it, LOL
Btw, my condolences on your polyend tracker.
No worries Frank!
I did end up losing all my stuff, but there is good news, after several hours of frustration and my stomach touching my bunghole, I have been successful in restoring all functionality to the devices that failed.
I’ll be back at it this weekend.
However, this thread is for your issue, and I don’t mean to derail it.
I’m hoping we can find a solution for you!
Also, in regards to the USB thing, I can’t use it because I don’t have the knowledge to mitigate the issues, but it seems like Marc has a lot of great advice and potential solutions for a usb set up.
I’m really hoping his advice pays off for you!
Yes – even without USB connection to PC.
The wireless gear (mobile phones and routers) will create radio frequency interference, and too many oscillator-based equipment in the power line will likely create electromagnetic interference. You might consider a fully isolated power filter for your audio equipment.
(The reason some studios were in basements or surrounded by concrete walls was precisely to tame RFI).
Haha, no, it sucked big time. Not all ICs and transistors were readily available in some areas, and aside from Radio Shack’s catalog – which started dwindling in the mid-80s, it was hard to get the right books and right parts. Metal casings were nowhere to be found, so we used the all too flimsy project boxes which would bend if you pressed it hard. So all of those pedals are long gone. And quite frankly they sounded awful. We didn’t know how to properly design the gain stage, so it was either clean or trash metal – the gain knob merely took you from hell to hell’s basement.
Very happy to hear that! 
But yes, let’s return to the topic at hand – sorry for veering off.
A problem that half-centuriers like us face with digital equipment is that we were used to the “highest possible” gain and output so as to reduce analog noise. Common practice was to record a tape all the way to the max peak an equipment would handle, and in some cases it was +5dB (good times!)
With digital, came the absolute zero tolerance to clipping, so one cannot peak anywhere near 0dB, and when it does, unlike the almost sweet “breaking” of analog equipment, you get that harsh noise – almost like a failure alarm denouncing your incompetence to the entire planet.
So, there is now a tendency to be way too gentle at the input gain and a generalised faith that digital equals clean, so you can pump up the output. But that is not the case.
So that’s why you need to have your signal come into the Dwarf at a level that gives enough volume and headroom, muffling the noise floor a bit but not risking to clip. Then you process and, if needed, lower the overall gain a bit. Then out to the interface, and this entire dance has to happen again (+ the dreaded impedance matching). And it happens yet again inside your computer – not to mention if you output that live! So it’s a opera in 3+ acts. Each one with its idiosyncrasies – why does Avid has the gain range at X and Apogee at Y? Why does Focusrite employ that transistor and MOTU that other one? It all adds to the scramble…
In the analog days, you’d start with high gain, hear the distortion, and bring it down slowly until is was clear and loud.
In the digital era, you start with a weak signal and beef it up slowly, then you stop short of being too daring and say “oky-doky, good enough.” That might result in one needing to add gain at the next stage – preamp, interface, mixer, power amp – and if the signal is too weak, noise rears up its ugly head. (Oops, there goes my 90s self…)
So, the best approach is set each one at a time and deliver it at a good level, with enough dynamic range and headroom to the next. That gives flexibility and keeps the noise low.
Hope this helps.
Thanks Elk! Glad to hear all’s well that ends well with the tracker. I had not heard of this device before so, of course, had to immediately Google it. Looks a bit like the Ableton Push controller, if I’m not mistaken. I had one once but decided to sell it, as I just could not wrap my head around playing a matrix of push buttons like an instrument in real time. I know it can be done (I’ve seen others do it, some brilliantly), but I’m too much of a dinosaur to figurethat out. Plus I like to “slappin’ de bass” more. And now that I have the tech to make my bass sound like a fractal distorted shakuhacki through a matrix of granulators, I probably don’t need a controller anyway, LOL.
Cheers
/fp
Dear Marc,
I just want to say that you are a wealth of information for someone like me.
I really appreciate the information you provide and it’s already been immensely useful!
Thank you for your education and I can’t wait to learn more of your secrets!
Hey Frank!
It’s been a pleasure to be a part of this thread, I have learned a massive amount from the short time you’ve had this up.
In regards to the tracker, it’s actually a much more powerful unit than a controller. It is a sampler and sequencer primarily, but it also provides effects, modulation, limited granular synthesis, as well as being a controller.
I can’t think of another piece of gear that has produced as many “happy accidents” as this has done.
Since you’re daw based, renoize would be the closest daw experience to the tracker.
I second that - hear, hear! 
Same for me, Elk. In the very short time I’ve been a Dwarf user visiting this forum, it’s made quite an impression on me. Nice to have the chance to compare notes with other sonic experimenters!
Interesting tip about the tracker. So it seems like this is a whole new category of devices I wasn’t aware of previously - thanks! Your comment about “happy accidents” made me think of a fairly new-ish h/w pedal that I also got recently - the Blooper by Chase Bliss Audio. You sort of play it while it sort of plays you and as a result you end up with these awesome ambient glitch type of effects that are just out of the world. In that spirit, I’ve been enjoying messing around with the several glitchy plug-ins from MOD including Avocado, Ganulator, Reflector and others. I love that kind of stuff, I hope there’s more to come in future.
Cheers
/fp
Oh man! You got a blooper?!
Those are amazing pedals in my opinion!
I’ve been working hard trying to figure out how to manipulate the dwarf into those sounds.
There are 2 main pedals that I really want to emulate, the big ones are Meris hedris, and the microcosm. I am not sure the dwarf can get close to those, and they’d be the only dedicated pedals I want to pair with the dwarf lol
I’m thinking that there is still a role for a few carefully selected h/w pedals paired with the mighty Dwarf, albeit (for me) probably a carefully limited scope, so I don’t end up with too much complexity. Not because of any “lack” per se; it’s just that some of the h/w pedals might do things in different ways than the plug-ins in the Dwarf and so adding the craziness of a Blooper with the other things a Dwarf does might yield the desired flexibility. Another one I got recently (before the Dwarf) is the Gamechanger Audio Plus pedal, which is really cool because it kind of brings a piano sostenuto pedal type of functionality (albeit multiples of one at once!) to my bass. I see now that the Stucker in Dwarf does something similar. I guess I better put a moratorium on any more h/w pedals for the time being!
Heck yeah!
There are some sounds I really want that I haven’t committed enough time to replicating on the dwarf, but this thing is like a Swiss Army knife and if I can sell the pedals I replaced, perhaps I may be able to try specific fix pedals.
I’m stoked you have found the sounds you are looking for!
I agree with you in regards that a few specialized hardware pedals for some specific features are a good buy at the current stage of the MOD lifespan, but this community is creative, and I’m sure some QOL improvements for MOD devices will eventually start closing that gap.
I hope this audio issue you’re having gets resolved, and we will keep trucking along to make this platform a real beast.
Whenever you get a chance to record, I’d love to hear what you’re doing!
Thanks man. I finally got around to building out my first two pedalboards today - both for tuned percussion - and uploaded them to the pedalboard feed. My imagination is totally stoked by the whole MOD ecosystem and the GUI and all, so I’m looking forward to building many more pedalboards over time. Mine might suck, but at least I’m trying, LOL. Anyways, I do plan to write a “Frippertronics” style patch for soundscaping in short order, and I will run that through my Ableton stereo looper setup and save the resulting composition to Soundcloud. When done, I’ll upload the link so you can hear it, if that happens to be of interest.
Cheers
/fp
Where do I sign up for the waiting list?
I’ll think up a special VIP package offering and put you at the top of the list
This is a great point, as it’s new to me as well – after owning many different multi-effects boxes. Why is this necessary + good to know for us Dwarf owners? I’m learning so much from this thread thanks to all, but I’m wondering why I need to learn it in the first place, since I’ve never had to before with my other boxes.
The mighty @QuestionMarc helps again!!! Excellent to learn from you, with many thanks.
One more dumb question: assuming I actually figure out gain-staging for my basses and guitars some point soon, is there a setting on the Dwarf that lets me save the gain-staging profile for each instrument – separate from saving pedalboards for those instruments?
Thanks, SSNYC. The same thought ran through my head, but I won’t question it much further as all of this learning, I feel, is a minor price of admission for accessing what is otherwise a pretty insanely amazing piece of tech.