Help! Humming/Radio Interference - Powered Speaker

[Edwin Smallhans]

Btw I appreciate everyone's input! Please keep em coming

[tekki]

Just spoke to a Man that knows his his stuff about this sort of thing. He rekons ur speakers probs aint the problem. As they are pritty good and the chances are its coming off your sound card. so get a wire and ground it phsically. That monster piece of junk creates a artifical earth. So is pritty useless to be honest.

TAKE IT BACK IF YOU STILL CAN

your soundcard aint cheap so shouldnt be shielding but could be. Also maybe as said before invest in some new cables

I would trade in that MONSTERthingy too!

[tombruton69]

Hey my second post is probs more correct. Create a real ground on the sound card by some wire and your floor. I actually mean you can get sheilding to put around speakers to stop signals coming in. you could also put this on your sound card.

As to your shielded cables talk. All cables have some sort of sheilding even if its just plastic unless there bare wire. I dont think using well sheilded cables are going to solve the problem but they certainly wont do any harm. Honest just ground your sound card it should solve it. if you have any mates who dj get them to bring there soundcard round and see if theres has the same problem

[josh@firestorm]

if it is RFI.. you need to get some extra ferrite beads to snap onto your cables..

here is a link to some from radio shack http://www.radioshack.com/product/in...ductId=3012599


and some reading material about how they work
[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferrite_bead"]Ferrite bead - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia@@AMEPARAM@@/wiki/File:Cable_end.JPG" class="image"><img alt="" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/7/73/Cable_end.JPG/220px-Cable_end.JPG"@@AMEPARAM@@en/thumb/7/73/Cable_end.JPG/220px-Cable_end.JPG[/ame]

edit: there was this story on the blog a while ago too.. have a read over this as well. http://www.djtechtools.com/2009/03/0...-pesky-cables/

[Edwin Smallhans]

After reading the links you sent me it seems like I attach the ferrite beads to the USB cable for the VCI-100 and the Saffire 6 USB correct?

[Edwin Smallhans]

@tombruton69: Hey so I tried your method and the humming and radio I/F did go down a little! But it is still unbearable argh. Maybe the guy at Guitar Center was right about the radio tower near my school is sending out "too much radio frequency" lol...

[tombruton69]

how close is it. Maybe you are going to need a shit load of shielding everywhere from your sound card to your speakers. So shielding on round the card. Top quality cables and shielding for the speakers.

Will speak to my mate that does the festivals again. I know they get alot of interferance on outdoor rigs as there is shits loads of equipment and about 100k of speaker power

[tombruton69]

just spoke to my mate make sure everything is grounded.

To insulate them you can wrap ur speakers in tin foil. Also unplug everything and run ur speakers with the gain turned up and tell us if you hear anything

[Syncretia]

I'm so glad I found this thread. I bought the Saffire USB 6 a couple of weeks ago and I've got exactly the same problem. It's not like radio interference, it's just hum. So here are some things about my setup:

-The hum occurs on my desktop and laptop
-I've tried unplugging the power on my laptop, and I still get the problem (although in some cases it was a lot better without the power plugged in
-The internal cards in my desktop, my laptop, and my mac don't hum
-All my testing was done by plugging headphones in to the lineout at the back (but the problem is the same with my stereo)
-I remember a little bit of hum with my old M-Audio card, but nothing like this.
-I also tried wrapping the cable with that ferrite stuff. Made no difference.

I'm ready to take this thing back to the store. People here have mentioned grounding the card by attaching a cable from the device to the floor. Huh? My floor is wooden (non-conductive). How would that help? Anyway the saffire is already sitting on the floor.

[Patech]

try plugging in the speakers into a different outlet i the room. (one that is NOT connected to the sound "source" ie computer)

I had the same problem until i moved my set up around and now it doesn't hum.