Terrible hum with new Pioneer SDJ-05 monitors

DJ Life & Community General Discussion
1

Terrible hum with new Pioneer SDJ-05 monitors

I just bought a pair of Pioneer SDJ-05 monitors. I am trying to use them with my S4 but am running into major issues with hum.

I am already using my 1/4 inch outputs to my main speaker system so that leaves me with RCA’s. I have high quality RCA’s (9 feet) going to a ARTech Clean Box Pro which converts the RCA’s to balanced XLR’s. I have the XLR’s going into my speakers.

The hum is terrible. I’ve tried unplugging my laptop (doesn’t help), switching to shorter RCA’s, using just RCA’s into the speakers, but there is still the terrible hum.

Now I tried plugging my iPod into the speaker with a headphone to RCA Y cable and that sounds great. No hum at all!

What else can I do to eliminate the hum while using the S4? It is driving me nuts. FYI that Clean Box should serve as a hum eliminator as well if I’m not mistaken…

2

have you tried the TRS?

3

Are your monitors plugged in to a different “leg” of power or are they on the same circuit as your S4?

4

I’m not sure why you’re getting the hum, but if you’re using your monitors as booth monitors you could always plug into your headphone jack using a trs stereo jack to rca

5

+1

Same difference. Mixer plugged into one circuit, amps/powered speakers plugged into another = ground loop.

6

i recently bought one of these babies..

ground loop isolator for about 5€ on ebay..

7

Thanks all. I am using the TRS outputs for my main system.

Yes, I was using different outlets, but yesterday I moved them to the same outlet and the hum was still there. I will try it again though to see.

8

Does your “clean box” have a ground lift on it? If so try engaging it. Lastly make sure your RCA cables are not running parallel to a power cable.

9

It does not have a ground lift. Based on where everything is set up, the rca’s shouldn’t be parallel to the power but I’ll double check.