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60 cycle hum in racks - stopping the insanity / share your magic



60 cycle hum....drives me insane too. I've been meaning to post
something on this to the group, ways to eliminate it in racks.  

I've tried:

- Separating power chords from audio cables
- Mounting effects with nylon washers (two), inside and outside (don't
worry about the systems they sell for asinine prices on the web...you
can do it for a fraction of the cost by going down to a hardware store
and buying your own nylon washers...boy, I wish I could sell 16 nylon
washers online for $5...what a mark-up)
- Installing a nice Furman power conditioner with so-called zero ground
protection, also cleaning up some of the wall warts
- Tried different outlets and circuits in the house; unplugged other
devices in the circuit, including the computer, lights, reostats, etc
- Changing audio cables
- Running effects in series versus parallel via mixer board AUX channels
- Lifting the ground, adding back the ground
- Removing specific effects from the power and audio chain

...everything short of incantations, hexes, and attempting black magic!
:)

I discovered the wall wart power supplies have a lot to do with
it...they produce some serious electro-magnetic fields. Also, I have a
Lexicon LXP5 and LXP1 that did not come with the original power
supplies, so have ordered two more from Lexicon, just in case. They
should be here any day.  The power supply for my Boss SX700 is a strange
one too. Just picking it up or changing it's direction produces
different degrees of hum.  I may order a new one of that as well.

This issue is very slippery. There are so many factors, and just
tweaking one thing in a system can impact other factors, and visa versa.
Before I built this new rack system, I had absolutely no 60 cycle hum.
Then when I added all those effects in my rack (LXPs, VF-1, Akira, etc)
and their respected power supplies....the hum appeared.  It's definitely
a systematic issue, because one thing does not cause the hum by itself,
and removing one thing does not eliminate it.  In short, nothing is
sufficient or necessary to produce hum...one of those concepts that
baffles philosophers when trying to define a thing, state, or event.

For record, I absolutely loath and despise with every fiber of my being
those freakin' wall wart power supplies. I wish everyone would just
build them internally and use a standard PC power cord, like with the
EDPs.  

Kris





-----Original Message-----
From: mungenast@earthlink.net [mailto:mungenast@earthlink.net] 
Sent: Monday, January 31, 2005 8:49 AM
To: info@krispenhartung.com
Subject: baby monitor as musical tool RE: emulating a cheap sampling toy


Another Great Idea, Krispen! As a parent, I remember how much fun the
monitor's static was...I normally hate static, but this was more like
cool artifcats, the "wee--oooo" pseudo-shortwave kind of noise, quite
musical. And the substrate for the artifacts was a rather comforting
hiss. (I can dig a little hiss... it's 60-cycle hum that drives me
insane.)

Sonic 

-----Original Message-----
From: Krispen Hartung <info@krispenhartung.com>
Sent: Jan 30, 2005 11:22 AM
To: Loopers-Delight@loopers-delight.com
Subject: RE: emulating a cheap sampling toy

How about this...buy youself an inexpensive baby monitor system.  The
cool thing is that it is wireless...plus I think it's a totally
ludicrous use of the technology! :)  You could just put a mic on the
receive side (parent) and put the transmitter side (baby) next to your
sound source (amp, percussion devices, mouth, etc).    I'm thinking you
could do all sorts of clever things with the wireless part, like leaving
your music loops go, and wandering around with the transimtter, corny
audience interaction, etc.

http://www.babyuniverse.com/search.asp?store=baby&searchstring=monitor
(some of these have two receivers, so you could get really clever)

Sorry if someone already suggested this...  Hah!!!

Kris