[ddots-l] Re: Recording with laptop
- From: "Steve Wicketts" <steve.wicketts@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <ddots-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 20 Oct 2009 17:02:55 +0100
Hi Mark,
Brian's right, don't mess with the electric coming from the Mains.
a few musicians from the 80's and 90's used to do this to eliminate hum at
their gigs. a few of these musicians eliminated themselves!
The Ground Loop Isolator I've been emailing you about, doesn't have anything
to do with the mains power.
It's a completely safe way of eliminating noise.
I was getting a lot of noise off of my laptop which I must say was very
expensive and custom built but still there was noise.
I purchased the Ground Loop Isolator and it worked brilliantly!
It's basically two phono jacks on one end of the cable and two female phono
jacks on the other end, with a barrel in the middle that works the magic.
"See, I can be technical like Brian" well, in my Dreams.
I know, I know, I too wished I understood these things, all I know is it
works.
Once you've purchased a Ground Loop Isolator:
1: plug a cable into the outs on your CD player, take the other end of the
audio cable and plug it into the female phonos on the Ground Loop Isolator,
2: plug the jacks on the other end of the Ground Loop isolator into the ins
on your sound card.
You may have to buy some jack adapters to fit on to the male phonos.
This noise problem may also be solved by just putting the Ground Loop
Isolator into the audio outs on your sound card then just plug your mixer or
monitor audio cable into the Ground Loop Isolator.
Just for the record, I'm not trying to grab the World record for the most
times Ground Loop Isolator is written in one email, plus, I don't have
shares in it.
Good luck.
Steve W
----- Original Message -----
From: "Bryan Smart" <bryansmart@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <ddots-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, October 20, 2009 7:10 AM
Subject: [ddots-l] Re: Recording with laptop
Lifting the ground pin will only eliminate a 50hz or 60hz hum caused by
equipment that is out of alternating phase with another piece of equipment
that you're monitoring. Besides, its dangerous, and I can't believe how many
people keep suggesting this to people on lists, as if grounding pins are
silly unnecessary annoyances on high voltage equipment. When you hear hum,
it means that you have an electrical problem. You can ignore the problem,
and live with the hum, but defeating the safety features in order to remove
the hum is foolish. Odds are that your electrical problem, now without the
silly safeties to get in your way, could end up hurting or killing you if
you accidentally touch the right combination of equipment and create a fatal
circuit with your body. Those ground plug lifting adaptors are no problem on
little devices that pull fractional amounts of power, but laptops, towers,
audio gear, etc can pull between 100 to 1000 watts or more, and it is just
not safe to do that!
Having said that, you probably don't have a hum. You probably have a digital
chirping sound. If you listen closely, you'll notice that the sound of the
chirping changes when the computer is doing something like loading web pages
and opening programs.
A lot of laptops do this. It is a combination of poor electrical circuitry
and a cheap USB sound card. The digital chirp that you're hearing is
cross-talk from a poorly shielded electrical bus inside the laptop. Some USB
sound devices have canceling circuitry that partially eliminates this chirp,
but the only real way to get rid of it is to not run the sound card off of
the laptop's power. That means buying a higher quality interface with better
canceling circuitry, or, better still, buying an interface with its own
power cord. An interface with its own power cord has its own internal
transformer and power bus, and won't be as affected by the cross-talk from
the laptop's leaky power bus.
If it turns out that you do have a power problem, then get a power
conditioner. If you can't afford a power conditioner, then get an
uninterruptable power supply from an office supply place. UPSes are cheap,
and do a fairly good job at cleaning up the alternating current's waveform
for the price that you pay.
Bryan
-----Original Message-----
From: ddots-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ddots-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Mark Dew
Sent: Monday, October 19, 2009 8:11 PM
To: ddots-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [ddots-l] Re: Recording with laptop
Steve, here's the deal.
We figured out if she unplugs the wall power supply from the laptop, the
static sound is gone.
Clear as a bell.
When she plugs the power supply back in, the sound returns.
So maybe that ground loop you spoke of a few days ago might be the answer.
Mark
At 05:17 PM 10/19/2009 +0100, you wrote:
Hi Mark,
Have you tried charging up the laptop and recording without the mains
adapter plugged in?
I use a laptop for my Studio computer and it works better without the
mains adapter.
This maybe worth a try.
Steve W
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mark Dew" <jmkeybd1@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <ddots-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, October 19, 2009 12:45 AM
Subject: [ddots-l] Re: Recording with laptop
Gord, I'll check with her and let you know.
She just said it's a usb sound card.
Steve, it's hard to tell, I think it's just a frying sound.
I think maybe the sound card is just bad.
What would you folks recamend for the laptop?
She's using a Mackie mixer, with a sm-58 shure mic.
She's just doing simple work, recording vocals along with an audio
file.
Mark
At 04:28 PM 10/18/2009 -0400, you wrote:
The mic in may be only mono. Also, you really don't want to use the
laptop's onboard sound for recording audio. What usb interface does
she have?
Gord
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mark Dew" <jmkeybd1@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <ddots-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Saturday, October 17, 2009 12:55 PM
Subject: [ddots-l] Recording with laptop
Hello folks.
Here's the problem.
I have a friend who has just a laptop and a mackie 8 channel mixer.
She has only a mic input on the laptop.
The audio siggnel is too hot.
She did perchased a u s b sound card that has a line in jack.
When she records using the line in there is a static sound she
can't get rid of.
I believe the sound card is bad.
The mic input on the laptop itself is ok, except too hot.
My question is, is there such a thing as an audio cable that would
restrict the audio level?
I had her to turn down the mic input on the laptop but with no results.
Any ideas would be welcome.
Cheers!
Mark
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