Electrical NOISE

Studio & Gear Rue Boyer Engineers & Staff
1

hEY, How to remove electrical noise?

I use DSP at my things, filters. usb cables with EMI Blind, but in certain position i still have this electrical noise in ribbon and din mics, how to remove? i have grounded loop things here and all you can imagine

2

Hi Fabricio,

There are a few things that could result in unwanted noises :

  • Try to seek the problem turning off everything except your audio chain, then powering every element one by one and see if you can identify one or several that generate the noises.
    Some lights or bulbs can result in getting noises on your recordings. Light dimmers, PLC boxes, even some phone chargers may influence the quality of the electric signal.
  • Check your earth connection and make sure your devices are properly grounded.
  • Make sure you’re not unbalancing your audio signal at some point.
  • Make sure your audio cables are not following the electric cables or touching a transformer (laptop charger for example).
  • You may consider using a power conditioner such as the Furman and see if it helps.
  • For ribbon mics or low output dynamic mics such as the Shure SM7, you may consider using small preamps like the Triton FetHead or Cloud Microphones Cloudlifter. They will give you an extra 20-30dB that will improve your signal to noise ratio.

If you want to learn more about ground loops and electrical interferences please let me recommend you this article published by Sound On Sound : here

I hope it will help,

Rémy

3

Thank you very much for the comment!

I have this article printed and it’s really good, of all the instructions you gave me, the ones I never tried were the ones for the light bulbs.

Tomorrow in the studio I will test with them turned off and remove anything and everything that is not part of the recording signal. I’ll be back here in the evening to update you.

Thank you very much for commenting and bringing a new perspective

1 Like
4

still with the problem but reduce a lot

5

Hi Fabricio, is there a chance you could run a small setup on a laptop, all powered on battery, and shut down your whole electricity on the main circuit breaker? And see if the noise disappears and come back with Electricity, if it does, then kill all circuit breakers, until there’s no noise, and turn on one by one and identify where this is coming from?

6

I’ve already done this, it doesn’t seem to be from the electrical network but from devices that use wifi and bluethooth, when I take them out of the room the noise disappears. Thank you so much