Weird sound coming from my laptop

[Calum]

Right i had a crap behringer mixer and thought it was that. but iv upgraded to a xone 62 and im still getting the sound.

the sound can be heard here http://www.djtechtools.com/forum/showthread.php?t=33514

anyone got any suggestions?


im running a vaio, 4ram 320 HD with traktor scratch pro 2.1.1
and an audio 8.

[Flash101uk]

Thats whats called a ground loop mate. Its digital feedback introduced by your laptop power supply.

Theres a couple of ways of killing it that I know of.

1. Get a ground loop isolator, they make them for cars for this exact reason. Theyre phono, so stick them on the output of the mixer going to your speakers.

2. Lift the ground on your laptop power adaptor. To do this you need to isolate the ground pin on the plug. I'll assume your from england with the 3 prong plug. The top prong is ground.
There are adaptors out there that isolate this from the socket. Its unadvisable though as it has a ground pin for a reason.

3. setup a new fuse line for your speakers. If theyre plugged into a separate fuse line, they'll be isolated from the ground loop on your gear. Thus negating the noise. Most clubs have this.

I recommend option 1, because its cheap, easy, and what I did.

[zimfella]

i tried various things and could never really fix it just minimise it a bit. In the end i bought a new laptop. sorted.

[Calum]

thanks for getting back to me, im gonna try the ground loop isolater and see if that works. if not, looks like i need a new laptop..

[Maxiboy]

I found that mostl PC laptops do this, it's a ground loop caused by the batery charger, if you disconnect the battery charger the sound will stop. This happens probably because they were not designed to output to big sound systems. Macbook Pro laptops seem to not have this problem as they were designed to be used by musicians and multimedia operators and were built to eliminate ground loops and hum. Yes you can minimise it with various methods but get a Macbook Pro and the problems solved. Thats what I did.
Cheers, Maxy.