VO-BB - 19 YEARS OLD!

[jrkaiser]

OK, so the past few weeks I have been fighting a ground loop... Nothing that was noticeable when recording, but when you turned the computer pot up for playback it was there, and if you amplified the "nothing" that was recorded, it was a pure 60 cycle waveform... Yep, I counted it... 60 full cycles in 1 second of recording... It looked pretty, but sucked because I couldn't find it...

If I recorded my voice it was so low it wasn't noticeable, but danged if it was still there...

So I unplugged everything... Over and over again... I knew it was coming from my computer as when I unplugged, it went away... I uplugged everything on my computer... Over and over again, yet it was still there... Coming through my MobilePre...

Then I had this brilliant idea... I've got a coax video in... Like the one on tv's and vcr's... That was the only thing that I hadn't unplugged because it was a pain in the ass to screw back on...

Wouldn't you know it... I could have saved at least 30 minutes a day over the past few weeks... Just passing this along to you... Maybe it will help you someday...

BTW, my noisefloor dropped from -47 t0 -70 instantly... That is with some gating... No gating I'm at -55 or so... And if I can get the computer out of the room it will drop tremendously, but I'm happy where it is at...

Back to the weekend...

[billelder]

I had exactly the same problem five years ago and solved the problem by canceling my cable and getting DirecTv. <g> Glad you got it fixed.

[donrandall]

Well Justin - sparked some curiousity and I just got to wonderin' about how much noise I might find inherent in my sound card - with no input of any kind, and then with the mic open but no input other than ambient room noise.

I hit "Record" but did not open the mic and recorded 30 seconds. I then opened the mic and recorded another 30 seconds of room noise added to whatever noise might originate in the card. I discovered that an open mic made only a very slight difference in what could be percieved by my ears.

Now, I don't know if my methodology would be considered to be right and proper in professional engineering circles, but being the dull witted slug that I am, I thought "what the heck, it might work". So I use the downward expansion in Goldwave, setting the Ratio (Goldwave calls it a "Multiplier") at -60 and then tried different settings on the Threshold, starting at -45, then -50 and so on on so on.

I did not begin to hear even the faintest glimmer of anything, even with the headphones turned up substantially, until I got beyond -55 with soundcard only and around -52 with the mic open.

Now - since I have no idea if my technique is valid, and I don't know what kind of numbers would be considered to be 1) Excellent, 2) Very Good, 3) Good, 4) Acceptable, 5) Fair, 6) Poor, 7) Unacceptable - or - Really Really Rotten, I am soliciting comments from others who have nothing better to do that sit around in their underwear and play with their equipment.

[brianforrester]