Serious Speaker Buzzing

DJ Life & Community General Discussion
1

Serious Speaker Buzzing

Hey guys, I’ve got a gig tonight and my speakers can randomly start buzzing if the cables are knocked.

I’m using RCA to XLR cables to connect my soundcard to the back of my Mackie Thumps. All will be going well, but if the connection between the RCA and the soundcard is knocked it can start an extremely loud buzzing (like a saw wave) and completely cut out the original audio signal. The buzzing can be stopped by randomly tweaking the RCA connections but will come back if they are knocked again. I think it may be a problem to do with the actual tip, ring and sleeve of the RCA accidentally coming in to contact when it is knocked but I’m no expert so don’t really know.

Can anyone help?

2

sounds like there is either a break in the cable somewhere or there is a bad/broken connection in one of the plugs, i.e. the ground is touching the hot. the fact ur using an unbalanced signal wont be helping either.

first place to look is to unscrew the xlr plugs and have a look, any issue will be obvious. also if the cable is particularly cheap and quite long, it may of been stretched past a point that it can deal with and hence a break has occured. good quality cable tends to have a braided shield which helps protect against that kind of damage, unlike cheaper stuff that usually only has a string like filler